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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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Sober Thoug hts 



ON 



Staple Themes. 



BY 

RICHARD RANDOLPH, 

Author of "Windfalls,'' etc 



*' I simply state these propositions ; I am not going to defend them. If they cannot defend 
themselves by the light which they throw on the anticipations and difficulties of the human 
spirit, by the hint of deliverance which they offer it, by the horrible dreams which they 
scatter, my arguments would be worth nothing.'" — F. D. Maurice. 



PHILADELPHIA : 

CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER. 

i 87 i . 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871. by 
RICHARD RANDOLPH, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers , Philada. 



TO FAITHFUL WORKERS, 

IN THE HOPE THAT, BENEATH THE TISSUE OF STUDIED WORDS 
AND SENTENCES, THEY WILL FIND AN ESSENTIALLY UN- 
PREMEDITATED LABOR OF LOVE, WITH RESULTS 
OF THOUGHT WORTHY OF CANDID 
CRITICISM IF NOT OF PRAC- 
TICAL ADOPTION, 

THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

PROEM 7 

BROTHERLY LOVE 9 

THE PACIFIC CABLE 22 

THE CHRISTIAN PENAL SYSTEM 23 

INFLUENCE 26 

OUR CHAOS 27 

FORTUNE 29 

THE RULE OF POVERTY 30 

A L'EMPEREUR 34 

HOME-LIFE 35 

NATURE 33 

THE REIGN OF PEACE 39 

WISH AND WORK 43 

THE DISEASE AND THE REMEDY 44 

THE OLD BELL 46 

PRIMARY PROBLEMS 47 

THE RELIGION OF LABOR 50 

MIND AND MONEY CONSIDERED AS CURRENCIES 51 

THE AVENUES OF WEALTH 61 

THE SURFEIT OF SENTIMENT 62 

ECCENTRICITIES 64 

HEALTHY ZEST 65 

EQUANIMITY 70 

THE CRIMINALITY OF COVETOUSNESS 71 

INTEREST 73 

CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM 74 

WELFARE 80 

THE COURT OF FORTUNE 81 

THE RISK OF RANK 84 

THE RHETORIC OF RIDICULE 85 

THE MISSIONARY 89 

v 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CUI BONO? 90 

TRUTH 92 

FUNGUS AS A WORD 93 

MIGHT vs. RIGHT 96 

CHRISTIAN COMMUNISM 97 

POLICY 99 

BIBLIOLATRY AND PANTHEISM 100 

THE LIFE OF GRACE 103 

THE KING OF WORDS 105 

MOTIVES 108 

RIVAL CLUES 109 

COMPARISON in 

FAITH AS A GIFT 112 

FORM 117 

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL 118 

IMMORTALITY 121 

SINCERITY AND SENSIBILITY 122 

SCEPTRES 125 

AFFECTATION AND EMULATION 126 

BUCKRAM 128 

ASSURANCE, SENTIMENTAL AND PRACTICAL 129 

TONE 132 

RULES OF RATIONAL CONVERSATION 133 

LAW 141 

UNANIMOUS SUFFRAGE 142 

POLITICS 145 

THE LAST HERESY , 146 

ONE 149 

THE RFALIZATION OF REST 150 

MUSIC 152 

THE NEW YEAR 153 

TIME AND ETERNITY 156 

AFTER-THOUGHT *57 

TRINITY 159 



SOBER THOUGHTS. 



"THERE IS A SPIRITUAL BODY." 

Oh, give me substance ! is the cry 
Methinks I hear, or see thee sigh, 
Amused no more by idle toys, 
Nor mocked with visionary joys. 

The scenes which crowd thy mind's area, 
Yield not the coveted idea 
Of good triumphant o'er the grave, 
And fitting for a soul to crave. 

The senses, as the gates of mind, 
The crumbling walls leave not behind ; 
And he who loiters at the gate 
Must share the base partition's fate. 

Partition-walls our bodies are, 
The flow of Life Divine to bar, 
Except we keep the sense-gates clear 
For passage of the stream sincere. 

The dome above rests not on them, 
But on that Man of Bethlehem, 
Whose body is the Christian's meat, 
Whose soul sits on the mercy-seat. 

Turn inward then thy spirit's eye, 

And worship toward that inner sky 

If thou wouldst gather light and strength 

To range the temple's breadth and length! 

The wonders of the holy church 
Shall bountifully bless his search, 
Whose cares of age or hopes of youth 
Regard the Majesty of Truth. 



SOBER THOUGHTS. 



PROEM. 

" In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer : I have overcome the world.' 
-John xvi. 33. 

The 'World hath served me well, I wot : 

Not many as dark a dawn 
Hath opened to a brighter lot, 

As noon hath come and gone. 

I may not hide it : gentle friends, 

And life than early dreams 
More fair, and work for cherished ends, 

Are food for joy, me-seems. 

But not in boasting would I sing ! 

My brother, who art thou, 
That bendest to the gales which fling 

Their fury on thee now ? 

I speak to thee. Imagine not 

That thou art all unknown, 
And thine a solitary lot 

With hope of succor flown ! 



A valley dark true souls must thread 

On this side of the grave : 
Turn thou from schemes and struggles dead, 

To Him who waits to save ! 



PROEM. 

Then to the bleak and gloomy day 
Shall summer-light succeed, 

And pleasant prospects by the way, 
And strength for every need. 

Lo ! other men have tracked thy woe. 

From fountains of the heart, 
The blessings or the blastings flow, 

Which make thee as thou art. 



BROTHERLY LOVE. 



" Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your 
joy: for by faith ye stand." — 2 Cor. i. 24. 

" If there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this 
saying, namely, Thou slialt love thy neighbor as thyself." — Rom. xiii. 9. 

" Let us not therefore judge one another any more ; but judge this rather, 
that no man put a Stumbling-block, or an occasion to fall, in his brother's 
way." — Rom. xiv. 13. 

"Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification." — 
Rom. xv. 2 » 

IT is doubtless a matter of the first import- 
ance to the Christian inquirer, that he r The resources of Re " 

^ ligion. 

should distinguish between the universality of 
the. offers of Divine Grace which are extended from heaven for 
the salvation of our naturally benighted and wandering souls, and 
the extent of their efficacy for that great end, which can of course 
be universal only so far as their express conditions are complied 
with. While duly realizing this distinction, he will not, on the 
one hand, hastily and slothfully accept the creed of those who 
style themselves Universalists in religion, by rejecting that 
righteous fear which is "a fountain of life to depart from the 
snares of death;" nor will he, on the other, limit or under- 
value the universality and magnitude of the mercy by which an 
earnest of the heavenly inheritance is revealed in the earthly 
experience of all, as a lure to our lost home, and, if accepted 
and followed in the cross to our corrupt nature, as a support and 
encouragement in the profitable work of truth and righteousness. 
Thus may we be prepared, without sacrificing the purity of our 
faith, to accept the doctrine that "God is the Saviour of all 
men," although "especially of those that believe;" (1 Tim. iv. 
10) and that He has prepared gifts "for the rebellious also, 



IO BROTHERLY LOVE. 

that the Lord God might dwell amongst them." (Ps. lxviii. 
1 8) The promises, that the wrath of man shall praise God, 
and that all things shall work together for the benefit of his 
faithful servants, are also thus rendered credible as to their pos- 
sibility, and intelligible as to their fulfillment ; since it appears 
that the error of the transgressor, so long at least as the treasury 
of grace may not be to him exhausted, consists not so much in 
a positive evil inherent in his outward act, as in the simple vice 
of will by which he prefers a meaner blessing to a greater one 
which is equally awaiting his acceptance. The works of such 
may thus evidently become undesigned testimonials to the glory 
of God, and means of wholesome discipline, if not of present 
consolation to their fellow-men, even while tending, by the 
willful blindness of the doers, to their own present or permanent 
loss. The dispensations of God in his outward providence, 
whether affecting us through the agency of the righteous man 
or of the sinner, are seen to be alike consonant with the inward 
manifestations of his grace, and to be, like them, though in 
varying degrees, co-ordinate influences in the Divine govern- 
ment of the world. 

These preliminary suggestions upon the actual co-operation 
of an involuntary principle of beneficence in the human agents, 
with that which is voluntary, or benevolent as well as beneficent, 
in the relations and conduct of social life, will, I hope, secure 
the reader from being startled or confused by the presumed 
combination of them, which I have adopted as the basis of 
some practical observations on the duties of social intercourse. 

It is recorded of the celebrated Sir James 

The lesson of Death. . 

Mackintosh, that, on the eve of his departure 
from the world of time, his mind was remarkably clothed with 
awe, in contemplating the mysterious realities which he felt to 
be involved in his impending change. Quick to appreciate the 
threatening aspect of his physical condition, he seemed to re- 
gard it as opening a comparatively fresh field for the exertion 
of his naturally noble and well-practiced power of thought : 



BROTHERLY LOVE. II 

but the labor of intellect appeared to end only in perplexity, 
and he confessed, reverently and repeatedly, that there was 
much connected with the beneficent career of Christ which he 
could not understand. The decisive crisis which was soon to 
usher him, as in the twinkling of an eye, from the preparatory 
scenes and associations which he had so largely adorned and 
enjoyed, into the realms of unfading glory and unfettered fel- 
lowship upon which he was doubtless about to enter, seemed to 
him as a deep, if not a dreadful, gulf, as it must seem to all 
who do not fully realize the power of religious faith to emanci- 
pate the soul from the bondage of our natural state, in all its 
circumstances and consequences. It would seem that he had 
not thus learned the apostolic doctrine, that the just man must 
live at all times by this very faith, so that the appointed means 
of salvation, being yet unrecognized or not duly appreciated, 
could not close up the fearful abyss in which our sins and in- 
firmities must otherwise naturally terminate, as tributary chan- 
nels leading to an ocean of darkness. Intellect was baffled, but 
the Light of Grace triumphed. The resources of worldly pru- 
dence, and the fruits of mere morality or conventional culture, 
availed him not \ but the work of the Mediator, as immediately 
revealed from heaven, and realized in his own heart through 
the obedience of faith, banished every doubt. To one who 
said, "Jesus Christ loves you," his reply was, "Jesus Christ — 
Love — the same thing ! " Afterward, on his simply saying, " I 
believe," and his attendant inquiringly adding, " In God ? " he 
replied, "In Jesus." 

Sir James Mackintosh may be said to have been, especially 
and pre-eminently, a moralist. His professional labors, his 
literary pursuits, and his extended intercourse with general so- 
ciety, testified in many ways that he was an almost lifelong 
student of Law, in the broadest meaning of that term : and such 
a life, and such a death, together considered, may be offered as 
a remarkable confirmation of the apostolic testimony that " love 
is the fulfilling of the law." 



12 BROTHERLY LOVE. 

Essential compre- T ne Divine Love, it must be confessed, is 
hensiveness of Divine the largest and highest theme which can oc- 
cupy the thoughts of man. Flowing immedi- 
ately from the Creative Cause of every derivative good, it is 
both the vitalizing power and the crowning fruit of all true 
knowledge. It is thus in itself both the worthy object of 
Christian aspiration , and also the means by which the humbly 
believing and simply self-denying seeker attains to a participa- 
tion in the sublime mysteries and pure pleasures of eternal truth 
and spiritual life. It is self-fulfilling and self-preserving, rescu- 
ing from the wreck of our fallen nature the divided and scattered, 
and still struggling, members of the first Adam, and binding 
them, by the inspiration of the second Adam, into its own 
"bundle of life, ' ' Here they find that renewed self-hood, in 
which personal individuality, through the sacrifice of the will, 
becomes compatible with that true fellowship, whose roots are 
within them, and lie deeper than the facts and forms of nature. 
The very ground of emulation and contention is renounced, and 
they become the adopted children of God, and brethren and 
joint heirs with Christ. 

«.... , ,. . 4 ,..„ Love is thus the fulfilling of the law, be- 

Practical limitation & ' 

o( its efficacy, the cause it is the fulfilling of itself. As it is, 
ground bf subsidiary indeed) an i nsep arable attribute of the Om- 
nipotent and Omnipresent Deity, the question 
may seem naturally to arise, Why need any labor to experience 
it, or offer to expound it, since it must be able and willing to 
manifest itself? Omnipotence is truly an awful theme, and one 
which must ever be unapproachable by man, in its ground or 
essence, as distinguished from its manifestations. Law, however, 
or Fate, as distinguished from freedom, is a subject which 
especially demands the attention of imperfect beings who are 
capable of struggling against their imperfections, inasmuch as 
it may possibly be opened to their inquiry by the very fact of 
its having some origin apart from the perfect will of Omnipo- 



BROTHERLY LOVE. 13 

tence. The curse of those who " came not to the help of the 
Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty" (Judges, v. 
23), is but one of the scriptural evidences that even the power 
of Omnipotence may not be, in every sense of the term, all- 
comprehensive. It is enough for us to know decisively, that it 
will be all-sufficient for our present and everlasting welfare, upon 
our acceptance of the terms prescribed for that effect. Its power 
will then indeed be "Omnipotence," so far as our experience 
can extend, and an Omnipotence which may be all the more 
adequately realized by us, the more necessary our co-operation 
may have been for its manifestation in us. But that there may 
nevertheless be some other power, outside of any omnipotence 
which we can assume to exist, which can, through our own con- 
sent, influence us as free agents to refuse good and choose evil, 
is rendered sufficiently possible to our apprehension by the 
simple analogy of mathematical science; in which we find that 
there may be supposed various infinite or incomprehensible 
quantities, which, by the mere circumstance of their being in- 
finite, must be practically equal in our finite calculations, and 
which yet in themselves shall be most unequal. Reason, there- 
fore, no more than experience, can clash with the vague testi- 
mony of recorded revelation and the crude sentiment of bygone 
ages, that there is a spiritual or indestructible Power of evil, which 
is infinite in itself, and yet essentially alien and inferior to the 
God of Love. By farther simply surmising this Evil Power to 
be self-existent, or co-eternal with the High and Holy One, who 
is the Author of the creation and the supreme Controller of the 
material universe, and thus capable of attracting to itself the 
wayward will of the immortal principle in man, we are enabled 
to assign a conceivable origin and a beneficent operation to all 
the fetters of Law, consistently with that element of necessity 
through which it is experimentally known to us all, as either our 
ruler or our servant. We may deplore the mixture of evil 
while accepting the whole truth as we find it filling our several 
measures of experience ; but if we sincerely prize our privileges 
as beings who are capable of looking beyond the limitations of 



1 4 BROTHERLY LOVE. 

the present,* we will not turn away from the imperfect promise 
of hope which is offered to us in the temporary bondage of 
Law. The law written upon stone has long been abrogated in 
favor of the progressive law which is written "upon the fleshy 
tables of the heart/' and which now summons the world on- 
ward to perfection ; but this also may be regarded as being, in 
its turn, but a law of principles, which are to be honored by 
being successfully abandoned for others which are more com- 
prehensive, until that perfect Life of Love is revealed, in the 
prevalence of which the dispensation of the Gospel is being 
continually inaugurated, and shall finally be fully established. 
So far, therefore, as this Divine Life may fall short of entire 
prevalence, the necessity must remain for a law which may be 
investigated and expounded, as the clearest attainable manifes- 
tation of Love, and for the exercise of that authority in which 
the earnest believer shall say to his halting brother, " Know the 
Lord." It is in the profound realization of my own infirmity 

* " My creed," wrote the late Henry Colman, " resolves itself into a very 
simple proposition — God is wise and good. He is as wise and good as wise 
and good can be, and under his government and providence I feel a perfect 
security. Whatever appearances may present themselves to my limited 
and imperfect observation, I have no doubt that the final result will be all 

that the best mind could desire I cannot look upon the human 

being with all the beautiful endowments of mind which pertain to him, and 
all the high moral attributes which so elevate his nature, and all the charm- 
ing affections, sentiments, and hopes, which seem to stamp him as divine ; 
I cannot look upon such a being advancing continually in intellectual and 
moral attainments, rising by self-discipline above everything sensual and 
worldly, and in the elevation and expansion of his views and purposes 
breathing a far purer atmosphere than this low world affords ; I cannot, I 
say, look upon such a being as destined only for a region of existence where 
his advances are continually restricted, and where soon his progress must be 
arrested, and all his attainments, noble as they may be, must come to naught, 
and be scattered like the gilded and burnished clouds which are scarcely 
seen, and their outlines hardly defined, before the wind sweeps them away 
forever." It would perhaps be hard to find in so small a compass a more 
eloquent or a much more accurate assertion of the triumph of freedom over 
necessity, through the intervention of law or discipline. 



BR O THE RLT LO VE. 1 5 

that I thus venture to give utterance, as briefly as I may, to 
some suggestions for the consideration of any who may find 
them suggestive, upon the subject or law of Brotherly Love. 

SO large a part Of OUr life COnsistS Of OUr Brotherly Love the 

social duties and privileges — our social affec- motive and sanction 
tions and aspirations indeed hold so predom- 
inating and engrossing a place even among our natural wants as 
rational beings — that we may safely speak of the spontaneous 
love or regard, which the great mass of mankind experience for 
those of their fellows with whom they can mingle and sympa- 
thize on the before mentioned ground of natural congeniality 
and providential beneficence, as the actual law of their life. 
As all human conduct is liable to the seductions of a lawless 
caprice, this natural love, being a leading and comparatively 
permanent influence, cannot lose its real rank as a law from the 
circumstance that its operation may be obscured by the confused 
workings of a many-membered and short-sighted selfishness. 
It may indeed be said to originate in selfishness, in so far as it 
must originally impress our fallen nature through the force of 
selfish considerations. It accordingly derives all its stability 
and validity, such as they are, from the fact that there is always, 
in any community, a characteristic average of enlightenment 
as to the means of pleasure or happiness ; and its operation 
will be obscured or confused, not so much by any deficiency 
which may exist, or by any deterioration which may occur in 
this average standard of action, as by the greater or less variety 
and discrepancy of the individual qualifications and dispo- 
sitions which may be thereby represented as the general charac- 
ter of the community. It will be chiefly as our law itself is 
upon this ground, more or less definite, that its operation will 
be more or less uniform. 

The great evidence of a Providential agencv 

° ' Traceable even in 

in the government of the world lies in the the suggestions of fear, 
fact that the characters of men, whether singly as Divine Love is in 

° J the revelations of fact. 

or in the mass, are found to be adapted to 
2* r> 



1 6 BROTHERLY LOVE. 

their external circumstances, with which again their duties and 
their interests flow in close and parallel connection, like the so- 
called "induced currents" of electrical action, — their duties 
corresponding with their characters, as their interests do with 
their circumstances. Owing to the assimilating influence of 
established institutions, consequent upon the comparative stabil- 
ity of enlightened institutions, the power of the social law thus 
determined by the character of a community, is most apparent 
in civilized or cultivated life ) but is probably discoverable in 
every condition of society, through the veil of conflicting but 
self-limited violations and apparent exceptions, and may safely 
be styled a natural " Law of Love," although it cannot be said 
to imply the elevated brotherly love which flows from conscious 
communion with the common Father, who is the inexhaustible 
Source of love, but may, on the contrary, often degenerate, 
through an unworthy choice of the objects of love, into a Law 
of Fear. 

Inasmuch, however, as all love for our fel- 

Perfect attainability . , , , . . 

and efficacy of Broth- low-bemgs as intelligent creatures, is, in a natu- 
eriy Love as an eie- ral and obvious sense of the word, brotherly, 

ment of the Christian i i j l • 

,. ,. and may even be regarded in every case as 

dispensation. J ° J 

one of the gifts of present happiness which 
were purchased for man by the propitiatory sacrifice of our 
adorable Saviour ; inasmuch, also, as the very communion of 
the saints, which is more worthily styled " Brotherly Love," 
when weakly regarded or condescendingly acknowledged as an 
object desirable in itself, or as a mere means for any finite or 
worldly end, must, if not wholly lost in such dangerous eager- 
ness or connivance, partake of the imperfection which character- 
izes every attainment when known out of its subordination to 
the ever present and all-sustaining Giver ; it would seem that 
the phrase " Brotherly Love " may be fairly adopted as practi- 
cally synonymous with the natural "Law of Love" before 
spoken of, and as representing a working means or influence 
which is universally at hand, and strictly congenial to the 



BROTHERLY LOVE. 1 7 

natural imperfections of mankind in their probational estate, 
and which still serves as " a school-master " to bring souls unto 
Christ. 

In either view of its development, there- Its pretensions as a 
fore, it appears that Love, so far as it may be law of duty invite 
embodied or exemplified in the facts and cir- 
cumstances of social intercourse, brings along with it an intel- 
ligible law, and becomes indeed the very fountain of law. So 
far, therefore, as there is occasion for recognizing law in any- 
thing, there is occasion for recognizing a Law of Brotherly Love. 
In other words, Love, so far as it may ever be an intelligible 
and practical principle, is by no means an irresponsible prin- 
ciple ; but its pretensions must always be open to question in 
the Spirit of Love, both as to its means and as to its objects. 
This doctrine may perhaps appear to the reader to be too evi- 
dent in itself to require such a detailed demonstration ; but it 
is fundamentally important that its truth should be deeply ap- 
preciated, in order that the profession of love may not become 
a rule of darkness rather than of light, as it is in danger of 
becoming where the willful ambiguity and reserve are indulged 
in, by which love may be confounded with dissimulation. 

There is therefore a Law or Rule of Love Test-principle, the 
by which all men who claim the sympathy of reasonable hope of 
their fellow-beings are responsible to one an- confe ™s P leasure - 
other. This law, in its simplest and most obvious expression, 
is nothing more or less than the suppression of selfishness in 
thought, word and deed, in our dealings with one another. 
It is the ceasing "to do evil," in order that we may "learn to 
do well." In other words, it is the abandoning, so far as 
possible, of our own transient interests and fallible opinions, 
in deference to those of our neighbors, and in the faith that all 
interests and all opinions must be alike temporary and illusory, 
which cannot be recognized as realities from whatever direction 
they are candidly contemplated. It rarely indeed, if ever, 
occurs, that men are driven by their mere physical necessities 



1 8 BROTHERLY LOVE. 

to the point of actual conflict, or are forced to maintain their 
dissimilar opinions in the form of dogmatic assertion or of di- 
rect contradiction. The encroachments of violence in either 
mode may be traced to the deficiency, rather than to the excess, 
of that sure power which attends an insight into the opulence 
of nature and the universality of truth. The Law of Love thus 
has room for free play, both in the prevention of open selfish- 
ness and in the mortification of secret conceit. To this effect 
we may interpret the testimony of the careful observer and 
thinker already mentioned and quoted, as it occurs in his diary 
at a date of twenty years previous to his decease. "A benevo- 
lent man," says he, (( estimates others by the degree in which 
he can make them happy ; a selfish man, by the degree in which 
he can make them subservient to his own interest. To estimate 
human beings merely or chiefly by their intrinsic merits, and to 
act towards them on that principle, is a proud pretension, but 
evidently inconsistent with the condition of human nature. It 
would be natural in mere spectators, but not in those who are 
themselves engaged in the race of life. The evident effect of it 
is, after all, to cheat ourselves. When we suppose that we are 
estimating others on principles of severe justice, we may be 
giving judgment on them under the influence of dislike, disgust, 
or anger." With the exception that the writer seems to ascribe 
our fallibility rather to the limitation of our circumstances than 
to the feebleness of our vision, the wisdom embodied in these 
remarks is perhaps as intrinsically pure as it is practically im- 
portant. It may be observed that we are not even told that the 
benevolent man will estimate others by the degree in which he 
may think he can make them better than they are. This would 
evidently involve the judgment which the writer deprecates, 
and which the Gospel of Love never enjoins, as to the spiritual 
condition, in the sight of God, of those with whom we have 
to do. Doubtless, few knew better than Sir James how difficult 
it is at all times, and especially in extreme or sudden cases, to 
avoid impressions and to lay aside prepossessions as to the secrets 
of individual character ; but he doubtless also understood that 



BROTHERLY LOVE. 19 

such conceptions are most likely to be useful, if not also to be 
truthful, where they are the spontaneous growth of a heart 
which is animated by the light of love, and so influenced by them 
unconsciously rather than presumptuously. At the same time 
probably no one would more readily have admitted, that the way 
to make men happy is not willfully to abet or countenance them 
in the pursuit of criminal or vicious courses. Probably he 
would have considered it the part of charity to take it for 
granted that they are desirous to avoid or escape from such 
courses, or that they at least will be (as few indeed will not) 
when their senses are fully aroused to see their disastrous ten- 
dency, and therefore to prepare them for such a view as gently, 
and as quickly, and even as candidly, as possible. Thus, we 
may presume, he would have been able to sympathize with that 
stirring strain of a celebrated investigator and teacher* of our 
own country and our own age : 

" Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond ; 
Bound for the just, but not beyond : 
Not glad, as the low-loving herd, 
Of self in other still preferred; 
But they have heartily designed 
The benefit of broad mankind. 
And they serve men austerely, 
After their own genius, clearly, 
Without a false humility. 
For this is Love's nobility — 
Not to scatter bread and gold, 
Goods and raiment bought and sold; 
But to hold fast his simple sense, 
And speak the speech of innocence, 
And with hand, and body, and blood, 
To make his bosom-counsel good. 
For he that feeds men serveth few ; 
He serves all who dares be true." 

Administration. External conflict and discord are ever the 

result and the measure of internal confusion. 
* R. W. Emerson. 



20 BROTHERLY LOVE. 

The Christian warfare is that in which the true believer struggles 
to observe and to obey that Light of Life revealed in his own 
soul, by which, as it is suffered to have free course, all the fruits 
of darkness are exposed. As this result is realized, the delu- 
sions of selfishness will be scattered and banished, and he will 
experience a humbling but cheering sense of surprise, on finding 
how truly superficial and impotent to annoy is every external 
occasion of offence, whether it consist in the mere limitation 
of physical necessity, or in the random trespass of the passing 
stranger, or in the systematic siege of the household foe, save 
as it may be naturally more or less competent to enlist and in- 
cite the lusts of his own heart which war in his own members. 
Surprise itself will vanish in its turn, as he proceeds to observe 
that selfishness, wherever existing, is so contracted in its very 
nature, that its seemingly most aggressive and most malicious 
outburst can be nothing more than a manifestation of spiritual 
slothfulness through its readiest mode of expression. Dis- 
covering that no natural disposition or appetite can find vent 
in a debasing gratification, except by the weak or rash sacrifice 
of an ennobling alternative, and having learned that the human 
will is never truly acting save when it is directing nature rather 
than acquiescing with it, he may adopt, in a sense perhaps 
deeper and broader than that in which it was uttered, the dec- 
laration of the excellent Hannah More, that << Idleness, though 
itself the most unperforming of all the vices, is the pass 
through which they all enter, the stage upon which they all act. ' ' 

^ . I will conclude this rambling labor of ci- 

Consummation. ° 

tation and comment, by briefly remarking upon 
another fragment of the dying testimony of the British moralist 
and statesman, as to the value of the <( royal law " * of Brotherly 
Love. " There is nothing," said he, (i so right in the world as 
to cultivate and exercise kindness — the most certainly evan- 
gelical of all doctrines — -the principle of Jesus Christ." We 
should doubless deceive ourselves by assigning, as these words 

* Jam. ii. 8. 



BROTHERLY LOVE. 21 

might be construed to assign, to this second commandment of 
the Christian dispensation, an importance superior to that of the 
first, But when we remember that we are told by our Divine 
Teacher that the second is like unto the first, we may at least 
infer that the due appreciation of either will involve that of the 
other. May we cherish them together in our hearts, and preach 
them together in our lives ! 



THE PACIFIC CABLE. 



6th Mo. i860. 



As brothers part at morn, 

To join at even 
With day-long labor worn, 

And count it heaven ; 

So Adam's family, 

Sped far asunder, 
Shall meet in amity, 

With worship-wonder. 

Some, turning from the sun, 
The earth have rambled, 

And all its treasures won, 
Or for them scrambled. 

Some, watchful of the skies,* 
Pursued the morning, 

Thirsting with eager eyes 
For its adorning. 

And still our early traits 

Appear to linger, 
And point from present straits 

With prophet-finger. 

May we, in self-defence 
From doom of Edom, 

Mix Eastern reverence 
With Western freedom ! 

That each to each may say, 
Have done with sorrow ! 

The world hath had its day ; 
Give God the morrow ! 



* The red disk in the national ensign of Japan has been supposed to represent the rising 
sun. 

22 



THE CHRISTIAN PENAL SYSTEM. 



" Say not thou, I will recompense evil : but wait on the Lord and he shall 
save thee ?" Pro v. xx. 22. 

" Michael the Archangel, when contending with the Devil he disputed about 
the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, 
The Lord rebuke thee." Jude, 9. 

THE practical mysteries which are involved in the abstract 
doctrines of the Divine Omniscience, Omnipresence and 
potential Supremacy, are unfathomable only in so far as they 
are inexhaustible. The Faith of to-day cannot live upon the 
manna of yesterday ; but materials can never be wanting for its 
subsistence while the occasion for its exercise shall remain ; and 
the essential work of the Christian, it should be ever remem- 
bered, is indistinguishable from his essential meat, whether 
it be called the " Work of Faith" or the " Labor of Love." 
If there be any universally instantaneous stage in the experi- 
ence of Christian conversion, such presumably is the extinc- 
tion of the blindness of Faith in the vision of Love. The 
subordinate objects, modes and fruits of Faith continually 
multiply in the path of the Christian, until Faith and Hope 
become finally alike obsolete in the immediate realization of 
that one Truth, Way and Life, from which all partial mani- 
festations of good proceed, to which they are designed to 
lead, and in which they are capable of being harmoniously 
blended. 

Of these subordinate truths or objects of Faith, there are 
two of which it is especially important for the sake of social 
order that they should be recognized as indisputable realities, 
? 23 



24 THE CHRISTIAN PENAL SYSTEM. 

One of these is the promise abundantly held forth in Holy 
Writ, that u bread shall be given and waters shall be sure," 
that the means of living and doing shall not be wanting, to 
the servants of God. The other is the duty and privilege re- 
vealed in the New Testament, of believing " all things" in 
the exercise of gospel-charity. Except the human judge be 
gifted on any occasion with the divine prerogative of an in- 
fallible discernment to the contrary, it is always possible for 
him to believe, and therefore always incumbent on him to 
assume, that his fellow-beings are endeavoring to do rightly 
so far as they may be free agents. The extent to which they 
are indeed free agents, is of course known only to Him who 
is conversant with all their past history and with all their 
present merely circumstantial limitations, and who knows 
how far they may still continue to be in any respects the 
slaves of habit and the pamperers of passion, without shut- 
ting " the gates of mercy" on their own souls. The first of 
these objects or rules of Faith may be styled the principle of 
social independence, and is here noticeable as the logical 
foundation of the second, which may be designated as the 
principle of social influence. 

Little reflection is necessary to understand that the trans- 
gressor who is treated as one who is doing his very best, must 
be treated most severely and most efficiently. And the more 
angry he may become at having it assumed, in the absence of 
his own open self-condemnation, that he could not do better, 
the more glaringly will he justify the disciplinary measures 
of those w r ho may have proceeded to act on the assumption. 
Almost as obvious is the remark that the merely formal well- 
doer is always the most easily kept within the reach of whole- 
some influence, by being treated as a well-meaner. For even 
hypocrisy cannot at last avoid drawing the contrast between 
itself and earnestness, and so being reformed, if anything can 
reform it, by the sense of its own surpassing shame. The 
precept and the promise, " Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, 
saith the Lord," like all the other mysteries of Faith, become 



THE CHRISTIAN PENAL SYSTEM. 25 

ever increasingly fathomable with the increase of knowledge 
and the development of mind, and increasingly illustrative of 
the general principle, " the just shall live by his faith," and 
of the corresponding general injunction, " Trust to the Lord 
with thy whole heart, and lean not to thine own understand- 



INFLUENCE. 



A maudlin mood by cunning caught ; 
A current, turned from nature's course, 
On piavate aims to spend its force 

By subtle machinations taught ; 

A flood, unstable as the will 

Which rests upon a borrowed faith ; 
A lawless league ; a reckless wraith 

At random prone to cure or kill ; 

So facile, and so purposeless, 

Seems oft the strength which all men know 
Through others on themselves to flow, 

In violence or gentleness. 

From crooked paths the way direct 
Appears to bend. So doth the heart 
Not moored by hope, seem to impart 

To things around, its own defect. 

In rigid course the truth still flows : 
E'en language when it thus affirms 
Some lameness shows, in that it terms 

The truth, a thing which comes and goes : 

But stabler than the electric ground 
Which underlies all matter ; o'er 
The gulf of outward distance, more 

Alert to waft the secret sound 

Of deep exclaiming unto deep ; 

Doth truth to hearts attentive prove 
Its work, and only seem to move 

In darkness, to the souls which sleep. 



26 



OUR CHAOS. 



" God is light." — i John i. 5. 

"God is not the author of confusion, but of peace." — 1 Cor. xiv. 33. 

HAD our blessed Saviour, on the occasion of his appear- 
ance as a man among men, commanded his disciples 
to u be perfect" as He was perfect, the precept might have 
been ever after adduced as evidence that example, rather than 
independent enlightenment and decision, — that precedent 
rather than principle, — was the divinely authorized means of 
governing the w r orld. By directing their attention on the 
other hand to an invisible and ever-progressive standard, — 
our conception of the infinite purity and pow r er of the Heav- 
enly Father, — he enforced the necessity of individual investi- 
gation, and established the doctrine of individual responsibil- 
ity. It is impossible for the unregenerate human mind to 
divest itself of the impression that pow r er in some way resides, 
and is therefore to be sought for, in creaturely attainment, 
rather than in a spiritual and essentially progressive union 
with the divine Creator. We wander at best in an inveterate 
and deceitful confusion of truth and beauty, until the super- 
natural power of faith in Christ shall subordinate the earth- 
ward to the heavenward nature, and lift us out of the inherited 
limitations which prevent us from recognizing the essential 
unity of the diverse aspects of truth. We must, more or less, 
have chaos in ourselves, and discordance with one another, 
until w 7 e learn on this inward ground of coherency and assur- 
ance, to distinguish between cause and effect in every definite 
portion of our experience. 

3* 27 



28 OUR CHAOS. 

The rule of Theology here becomes the rule of all science 
and the test of all art. As there is no safe beginning, so there 
is no worthy ending, but in God ; and every assumption, and 
every aim which deliberately falls short of acknowledging his 
omnipresent power and goodness, is self-refuted and self-de- 
feated, in the view of any who have become acquainted with 
the Source and course of true inspiration. The manna of the 
wilderness which lasted but for a day, is an enduring type of 
practical wisdom, so long as that wilderness journey itself 
remains an unfulfilled type. The perishable creatures can 
only be truly estimated and safely pursued in their graduated 
and ever-varying subordination to the eternal Creator, and to 
one another in Him. What this subordination at any partic- 
ular juncture may be, mortals cannot of course be expected to 
decide for one another, since the leadership of mind is itself a 
variable phenomenon, imperfectly symbolized in any natural 
or artificial distinctions, save as the lines of distinction in 
science and in society shall be viewed from that Centre of 
divine illumination and life — that "fullness of God,"* — in 
which they meet and terminate. It is enough for all practi- 
cally to remember that subordination, mediate or immediate, 
and not self-preservation, is "the first law" of the better 
nature, wherein obedience becomes the sole condition of end- 
less life and perfect order. " Let us hear the conclusion of 
the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments, 
for this is the whole duty of man." f 

* Eph. iii. 19. t Eccles. xii. 13. 



FORTUNE. 



" How rudely broken into bits 
Is this promiscuous whole ! 
How miserably sometimes fits 
Its circumstance, the soul ! 

"This mess we call society, 

As known in outward things — 
What ruinous variety 

Its boasted order brings ! 

" The soul's the substance of the man : 
Are not all souls alike ? 
Then how unfair the social plan, 
In which such contrasts strike ! 

" My neighbor has the very lot 
Which would be bliss to me, 
With grief or pother scarce a jot, 
So far as I can see. 

" Surely, some savage solitude 
Were fitter to my mind, 
Where such hard thoughts could not intrude, 
Nor envy of my kind !" 

Not so, most wayward ! Thou canst own 

The soul to be the man ; 
But yet the wrongs thou wouldst bemoan, 

Thou wilt not stay to scan. 

Thy neighbor knows his private grief: 

And thou, if thou wilt see, 
May'st find the pleasures of his fief 

An heritage to thee. 

29 



THE RULE OF POVERTY. 



" That no flesh should glory in his presence." — I Cor. i. 29. 

I CANNOT doubt that the famous founder of the Order 
of the Franciscans was and is a genuine saint. I do not 
venture to decide on the truth or falsity of the story of his 
having received in hands and feet and side, the stigmata of 
his crucified Lord ; and I consider that it would be equally 
rash to recommend his vow of perpetual poverty to all con- 
ditions of men in all ages of the world. His memory is 
illustrious with me, mainly bv virtue of his plain-spoken pre- 
cept, " Let every man remember that such as he may appear 
in the sight of God, such he really is." I fancy that I observe 
in this utterance a combination of filial dependence and manly 
independence, which show it glaringly in contrast with that 
too popular strain of an erratic modern minstrel, 

" O wad some power the giftie gie us 
To see oursels as ithers see us !" 

I consider that if we are but careful to shun poverty, it is 
unnecessary and inexpedient, as a general rule, to go to the 
length of actually seeking it. Says a contemporary,* 

'Twas not wisely done, 
On all to bind that ecstasy of love 
Which revels in privations. Well for him, 
The stainless-hearted knight of poverty, 
That wandering through the world, as one who lacks 
His daily bread. But, for the feebler souls, 
The beggar's life may bring the beggar's thoughts, 



* Prof. Pi.umptre, Master and Scholar. 



30 



THE RULE OF POVERTY. 31 

The sordid care, the coarse and earthly greed, 
The baser that all gloss and finer touch 
Are torn away, and nothing left to hide 
The swine-like foulness." 

The advantage of every condition of life may be said to 
consist solely in its adaptedness to the character of the liver. 
In other words, the happiness and usefulness of all men de- 
pend, under the guidance of heavenly grace, only on that 
correspondence between their several characters and circum- 
stances, which is the continual proof of a Providential control 
in human affairs, and without which the great practical doc- 
trine of divine contentment and devout thankfulness through 
all the vicissitudes of life, apart from the hope of a still more 
blissful hereafter, would be a manifest heresy. To the faithful 
Christian, life itself is such absolute and unfathomable wealth, 
that all the degrees of material and intellectual attainment, 
and of merely imitative culture, by which men are distin- 
guished when compared among themselves, are indeed but 
tfc as the small dust of the balance" in his estimation. Where 
there is but that fitness on the part of any to their several 
surroundings, of which the prevalence of thankful content- 
ment is the indisputable proof, there must be lessons of uni- 
versal interest to be derived from such surroundings, even if 
they be remarkable only as those of comparative destitution. 

The advantage of the condition of poverty lies, doubtless, 
in the fact that it is pre-eminently a condition of discipline. 
In a world where discipline may be said to be the only uni- 
versally important object of life, as being the only means for 
realizing the riches of a nobler world, this circumstance might 
indeed seem to recommend the vow of the Franciscans, were 
it not that the purely spiritual discipline of the Cross of Christ 
is of itself sufficient under all circumstances, to lead him who 
is the subject of it to the realization of the heavenly life. The 
peculiar advantage of contented poverty, therefore, must lie in 
the peculiar facilities which it may afford for the apprehension 
and extension of that truly and only divine discipline. 



32 THE RULE OF POVERTT. 

"The world, the flesh and the devil," are the great foes 
which in all ages beset the mind, the body and the soul, of 
the Christian pilgrim. The use of poverty as a guard against 
the dangers of fleshly indulgence, I deem too obvious for com- 
ment. Its utility as a weapon for contending with the great 
4w adversary of souls," where the appetites and the thoughts 
are rightly ordered, we may well doubt, inasmuch as all sorts 
of attainment here become available for the vindication of 
truth. It therefore only remains to consider how a cheerful 
acquiescence in this condition of life may assist in overcoming 
the Evil One, when we meet with him neither as an open 
tempter in the house of feasting, nor as an open accuser in 
the house of mourning, but rather as a companion in the 
highway of social life, elaborately disguised with all the su- 
perficial graces of " the prince of the power of the air, the 
spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." 

The aid which a superficially apparent poverty here brings 
to the Christian soldier, consists in the simple fact, that it 
furnishes him with a mask which is still more effectual than 
that with which he has to contend. The apparent felicity of 
u the children of disobedience," if at all deceptive to him, is 
less so than his apparent misery is to them. His circum- 
stances ensure to him that ready contempt which removes the 
only disguise of their character, the only objects of their am- 
bition or double-mindedness being there comparatively want- 
ing, and therefore practically absent. Affectation being with 
them the language of respect, it is only in the company of 
those whom they despise, that they can make any approach 
to sincerity. Thus it happens that the canine nature which 
fawns and cringes before the insignia of worldly power, can- 
not conceal its lupine lineage from the eye and ear of those 
who have discovered, either in their own experience or in 
that of others, the real resources of poverty. 

No artificial system of espionage can approach in efficiency 
to that which is thus Providentially maintained in the career 
of those, who " using the world as not abusing it," are the 



THE RULE OF POVERTY. 33 

true rulers of the world, to the extent of the talents severally 
committed to them. u Notwithstanding," let such heed the 
warning of the Divine Leader and Teacher, " in this rejoice 
not, that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice 
because your names are written in heaven." 



A LEMPEREUR. 



Abaft, like pilot at his helm, 

As truth obscure, 
The simple freeman guides his mystic realm 

A Cempereur. 

He dimly sees the difference 

More known than seen, 
Between the show and substance of events 

In life terrene : 

Yet well he knows how faint his sight ; 

And farther knows, 
That, as the world revolves through day and night, 

Its harvest grows. 

So cares he not to stoop his eyes 

To watch the growth, 
But sows and reaps in season, as the skies 

Direct for both. 

Whate'er the field, he cares to know 

Force, more than form, 
Braced, whether zephyrs or tornados blow, 

To stem the storm. 

He views, unblinded by desires 

For vain eclat, 
How every falling crisis still requires 

Its coup d'etat ; 

And as each Rubicon is passed 

With purpose pure, 
Good angels call to the serene outcast, 

— Vive Vempereitr I 



34 



HOME-LIFE. 



" Let love be without dissimulation." Rom. xii. 9. 

IT is well said that u Charity begins at home." Only in 
the corrupt creeds and codes which tend in some way to 
enslave man to his fellow-mortal, can the contrary doctrine 
gain place. Peace and war alike originate in the heart. As 
the sure policy of mercy does not lessen its excellence, so the 
seeming impunity of tyranny does not qualify its disgraceful- 
ness. The despot, of whatever sort or degree, is but a dis- 
guised and successful beggar, who lives upon the forbearance 
or the ignorance of his victims. The corner-stone of his im- 
posture lies in the artful insinuation that the first duty of a 
subject is to an earthly ruler or to a prevailing fashion, rather 
than to himself and to his God. The true subordination of 
both Church and State is thus more or less subverted ; the 
very family is divided against itself, and the barriers of pre- 
judice, which conceal the possible freedom of divine grace 
from the actual slavery of human nature, to the same degree 
confirmed. Individual independence is the necessary basis of 
social subordination, harmony and intelligence. Enlightened 
self-interest, although by no means a guaranty of the en- 
lightened self-sacrifice which is the soul of the Christian life, 
is the only principle of nature which that spiritual motive can 
immediately and effectually address. The ecclesiastical, or 
political, or social propagandist, who advocates any other ma- 
ternity for the individual idea of duty, is essentially a beggar 
or a brigand, who sows selfishness instead of charity, and can 
reap only disappointment. Surely it is well that both rulers 
4 35 



$6 HOME-LIFE. 

and subjects should cherish the doctrine, that a man's life, be 
it the life of chanty or that of selfishness, cannot begin else- 
where than at home ! 

The battle of life must be fought at home. The senti- 
mentalist who maintains that successful life is a mere de- 
velopment of nature under any definable course of culture, 
must indeed assume the state of peace to be an heir-loom of 
nature ; but he must find himself at length at fault, both in 
the individual and in the social application of his doctrine. 
The indefinable law of the spiritual cross is the only rule 
which can enforce that continual subjection of the natural 
will which is comparable to the death of the germinant seed 
in the covering soil. All preconceived notions of happiness 
and harmony must be subordinated, if not sacrificed, to the 
continual revelation of the inexhaustible Spirit of Good, or 
happiness and harmony will be empty names. Premedita- 
tion, or dependence upon preconception, implies a subjection 
to the limitations of time ; whereas eternity is the element of 
the soul, whose only healthy and lasting dependence must be 
upon the Divine Word, which " is not bound" by any of the 
limitations of time, space, or language. If the show of order 
remains where the will of the one omnipresent and divine 
Ruler is not freely acknowledged as the accessible and ulti- 
mate standard of duty, it can only be because beggarly Fear 
has proportionally usurped the throne of beneficent Love. 
The principle of fear cannot indeed be dispensed with, so 
long as the bondage of sin shall in any degree survive in 
individuals or in the world ; but the triumph of life consists 
in its voluntary subjugation to the mystical but omnipotent 
dominion of Charity. 

The triumph of life must be found at home. Glorious 
indeed is the triumph of the life of charity ; for the whole 
world — yes, the whole universe, is its home. Its expansive 
virtue demands infinitude for its development. If it indeed 
begin at home, its genuineness will be incontrovertible, and 
its prowess irresistible. Conquests and coalitions will crowd 



HOME-LIFE. 37 

upon its career, and crowns of rejoicing will everywhere re- 
ward the soldiers of faith. Confusion, on the other hand, and 
bankruptcy beyond the hope even of beggary, will be the in- 
evitable doom of the faithless soldiers of fortune, who shall 
have incapacitated themselves, by the eagerness of selfishness, 
from enjoying the overflowing pleasures of the divine life. 
" How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation ?" 



NATURE. 



38 



As culture is not intuition ; 

As knowledge is not merit ; 
As lust bespeaks a base ambition, 

And will, a ruling spirit ; 

If faith be not a galling fetter, 

Nor hope a weak illusion, 
Nor love a loose and lifeless letter, 

Nor truth a grand confusion ; 

Man's life affords an aspect double, 

An upper and an under, 
Which fools may try with barren trouble 

To simplify or sunder. 

For nature waits a trusty servant 

As on a faithful master, 
While'er the soul abides observant 

Of profit and disaster : 

While, true to its allotted station, 

Ey sure experience lighted,* 
It works the wonderful salvation 

In which all wrongs are righted. 

Then nature finds her beauty youthful, 
With more than culture polished ; 

While knowledge is as strong as truthful, 
And slavish lust abolished : 

She shines with a divine reflection 

In all her turns and features, 
A mirror lent for self-detection 

To self-deluded creatures. 
* Phil. iii. 16. 



THE REIGN OF PEACE. 



"Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live." — 2 Kings xx. 

THE origin of order, like that of every blessing and of 
every curse, of all life and of all action, is in the realm 
of spiritual experience. It may indeed be seriously question- 
ed, as it certainly has been doubted by intelligent observers, 
whether there can be any actual consciousness in any other 
than spiritual beings ; and without consciousness there can 
obviously be no such thing as experience. The freedom of 
heaven and the bondage of hell, sometimes incidentally con- 
fused, but always essentially distinct from each other, may be 
said to be the animating principles of human experience ; and 
however they may be temporarily veiled from our apprehen- 
sion by our necessary intercourse with the things of space 
and time, they will be finally revealed to us, either to our joy 
or to our sorrow, as the inward substance of the outward 
manifestations in which they are at once incorporated and 
obscured to our natural perceptions. Order, or simplicity in 
multiplicity, is the language of truth to the truly attentive ear. 
The very unity of the Deity, so far as it is capable of intel- 
lectual demonstration, is but the logical consequence of the 
universal simplicity of truth. Truth, by being essentially a 
simple thing, is a book ever open and legible to the true 
lovers of order ; and hence, if we believe the power of light 
to be indeed superior to that of darkness, we must infer that 
order is the first law, not merely of the spiritual, but also of 
the natural, world. It is the principle through which the 

presence of the Almighty and All-gracious Creator is reveal- 
4 * 39 



4° THE REIGN OF PEACE. 

ed in his works to all who watch and strive against the en- 
trance of confusion in those deep abodes of feeling which are 
among the secret sources of thought. 

Like any other partial and merely auxiliary blessing, in- 
deed, order is not a thing which is to be found by seeking it 
as an end. Since it is idolatry to pursue any good short of 
the absolute and unfathomable will of our Heavenly Father 
and Ruler exclusively for its own sake, we cannot be actually 
dependent upon even the highest form of law while we are 
the privileged subjects of free grace. The fear of the Lord 
which is " the beginning of wisdom," is indeed the life of the 
Law, until the perfect love which u casts out fear" becomes 
the established bond of union between God and man, in the 
new dispensation of perfect salvation. Truth, however, is a 
thing which may be lawfully pursued and wisely loved for 
its own sake, since it is the nature of it to purge itself of all 
blemishes which our blindness may impute to its appearance, 
and to heal all the miseries which our diseased nature may 
suffer from its operation, as it is indeed singly prized and 
sought for. It is the divine principle in all the dispensations 
of providence and of grace, and finally becomes to its faithful 
followers but another name for the Deity as revealed in the 
blessed and only Mediator between God and man. There 
can thus be no genuine and effectual love of order which 
may not be more worthily styled a pure love of Truth. The 
warning therefore which was addressed to the prosperous 
king of Judah, is applicable in all ages to all men in whom 
the great work of life has not been perfected by their accept- 
ance of the Divine Redeemer's universal offers upon his own 
unvarying terms. 

The question, then, forcibly presents itself, What is this 
stronghold of order which we call Truth, and how is it to be 
known? Truth maybe said to be in itself the material or 
substance of all healthy experience : in its relations to human 
consciousness and conduct it may be styled the object of 
faith and the fruit of consistency. fc4 He that cometh to God 



THE REIGN OF PEACE. 4 1 

must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them 
that diligently seek Him." The true earnestness of purpose 
in which past, present and future, are regarded but as different 
manifestations of eternity, and which accordingly values in 
all of them only those things which are of substantial and 
eternal interest, is the only spiritual qualification in any way 
originating in the exercise of our own free will, through 
which we can recognize the essential unity of Truth. As we 
thus become consistent in ourselves, we are enabled to appre- 
ciate the consistency which prevails among the seemingly 
heterogeneous objects of our knowledge, — a consistency 
which the sincere seeker ever finds to keep pace with the 
actual progress of his knowledge, and to be limited only by 
the barriers of his conscious ignorance. There is indeed an 
unconscious ignorance, or a blind conceitedness, which is 
ever ready to impute its own inconsistencies to the works of 
the All-wise Creator ; but they who are the subjects of it 
must at best be classed w^ith the idle hearers of the word, 
whom the Apostle likened " to a man beholding his natural 
face in a glass, who goeth away and straightway forgetteth 
what manner of man he was." True faith may be said to be 
a spiritual travail, which results in the production of a com- 
municable knowledge, and of visible works, which alike bear 
the family features of a divine system, however variously 
times and circumstances may limit or extend the capacities 
of individuals for such production. Truth will be not less to 
any the object of their faith and the fruit of their consistency, 
from the fact that the outward limitation of unusually im- 
perfect opportunities may disqualify them from becoming 
teachers to others, otherwise than as examples of the man- 
ifest felicity which rewards true earnestness. To such, no 
less than to the most accomplished expounders of nature and 
of doctrine, may be applied the remarkable testimony of a 
celebrated cotemporary. " Your true encyclopedical," says 
Thomas Carlyle in his essay on Diderot, " is the Homer, the 
Shakspeare ; every genuine poet is a living, embodied, real 



42 THE REIGN OF PEACE. 

encyclopedia — in more or fewer volumes. Were his experi- 
ence, his insight of details, never so limited, the wltole world 
lies imaged as a whole within him." On the other hand, he 
continues : — " Whosoever has not seized the whole, cannot 
yet speak truly of any part, but will perpetually need new 
guidance,- — rectification. The fit use of such a man is as 
hod-man ; not feeling the plan of the edifice, let him carry 
stones to it : if he build the smallest stone, it is likeliest to be 
wrong, and cannot continue there." 

Thus in seeking for the stronghold of order are we con- 
strained before all things and through all things to distinguish 
the "love" which is "the fulfilling of the law," and which 
u buildeth up," from the "knowledge" which " puffeth up." 
" The foundation of God standeth sure ;" and as the discipline 
of obedience indeed keeps pace with the growth of knowledge, 
we shall prove to ourselves and preach to others that " the 
work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of right- 
eousness quietness and assurance for ever." However fully we 
may then be aware of the liability of colleagues or of suc- 
cessors to pervert the treasures of knowledge and the outward 
resources, which they may have shared with us, or shall in- 
herit from us, to unholy ends, we may remember how the 
prosperity even of a Hezekiah seemed to be in some degree 
thwarted by the folly of a Manasseh ; and conscious of hav- 
ing done what we could, we may with him contentedly query, 
" Is it not good, if truth and peace be in my days?" 



WISH AND WORK. 



" I would if I could be as free as the air, 
And as kind as the harvest-moon : 
As through the clouds' dance the stars tranquilly glare, 
Through my thoughts would my soul keep tune. 

" Life's garden extending beneath my mild sway 
Should be ordered with faultless skill : 
Earth's beauties and riches the seasons should lay 
At my feet, to await my will. 

" And when the dread crisis arrives, and the earth 
From my converse withdraws its face, 
With pious assurance I'd count on the worth 
Of the heavenly store of grace." 

But oh ! it were well for thee, offspring of Eve ! 

While thy castles in air may stand, 
To mark their foundation, and so to believe, 

That thy heart shall sustain thy hand. 

Whatever thy fortune, thy hand shall have work : 

Call it labor, or rest, or play, 
Thy hand shall find weight, from whose cumber no jerk 

Nor contrivance can break away. 

Then work with thy might, as thy soul findeth light ! 

It is all that a man can do : 
The path of the just may be dim to thy sight, 

But thy work shall refine thy view. 

The work of which faith is the wonderful seed, 

As a flower, shall then confess 
The reign of that heaven of peace, which hath need 

Of the new earth of righteousness. 

43 



THE DISEASE AND THE REMEDY. 



" He that believeth shall not make haste." Isa. xxviii. 16. 

FESTINA LENTE— Hasten slowly," is an old motto 
which is not yet wholly obsolete. It has however, it 
is to be feared, become to a great extent unintelligible in this 
age of boasted freedom and expansion. Deliberateness, or 
thoughtfulness, is indeed the surest guaranty of unfailing 
promptitude and true expedition ; but, now as of old, it is 
painfully manifest that " haste " and "hurry" are practically 
almost synonymous terms. We seem ever prone to waste 
our energies in eagerness, to adopt hurry instead of delibera- 
tion as our counselor, and to find ourselves the creatures of 
flurry and disappointment, instead of the organizers of ex- 
pedition and success. So will it ever be, w T ith all who forget 
that the life of a spiritual and rational being depends upon 
the exercise and repose of faith in " every word that proceed- 
eth out of the mouth of God," rather than upon " the abun- 
dance of the things which he possesseth." 

So long as we seek our life in material wealth, in physical 
health, or in social reputation, we must neglect the only source 
of perfect satisfaction. " Let every man be fully persuaded 
in his own mind," wrote he who may perhaps pre-eminently 
be styled the catholic apostle. If happiness be indeed attain- 
able, as Christianity testifies, apart from the fulfillment of any 
worldly conditions, the true worker will never be tempted to 
forsake the beneficent career of universal duty, in quest of 
any local and ephemeral good. Ever directing the eye of his 
soul upward and onward, he will continually and increasingly 



THE DISEASE AND THE REMEDY. 45 

outgrow the short-sightedness which is the heir-loom of our 
nature, and which is accordingly naturally manifested in our 
undue devotion to the things of earth. His spiritual dignity 
will show itself in a practical humility, which can joyfully 
acquiesce in any external allotment of the Supreme Ruler. 
Being faithful in the " few things," he will indeed in the pro- 
gress of the Divine economy be made " ruler over more ;" 
but the reward will be ever attained by a devotion to the 
incalculable obligations of duty, rather than by a calculating 
anticipation of the reward itself. Otherwise his work would 
evidently be one of selfish and therefore rash usurpation, 
rather than of self-renouncing but safe deliberation. Whatever 
may be our sphere of action, let us remember that " he that 
maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent ;" but that cw the 
liberal man deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things he 
shall stand." 



THE OLD BELL. 



Holy bell as ever hung ! 

Now again we turn to thee : 
Sing the song which erst thou sung 

To our country's infancy ! 

Dumb no longer mayst thou stand : 
Now anew the strain begin, — 
"Liberty throughout the land, 
Unto all that dwell therein !" 

Now at length the melter's heat 
Shall thy harmony restore, 

While our hearts responsive beat, 
Not with doubtings as of yore. 

Doubt and discord brooding then, 
Well thy fortune did relate, 

Eloquently mute to men 

Heedless of their high estate. 

Now the monsters, with their fry, 
Caste, and truculence, and greed, 

In the flaming furnace die, 
And the land afresh is freed. 

Broken bell ! In sympathy 
With our crisis and our cure, 

Once for all do thou agree 
Gentler burning to endure ! 

Celebrate the service grand 
O'er our hydra-headed sin, — 
" Freedom throughout all the land 
Unto all that dwell therein !" 

4th 2nd Mo. 1865. 
46 



PRIMARY PROBLEMS. 



" But I fear lest by any means your minds should be corrupted from the 
simplicity that is in Christ." — 2 Cor. xi. 3. 

THERE are two queries which continually salute the 
mental ear of every sensible and earnest man, woman 
and child, until they find such answers to them as may qual- 
ify them to know and do their proper business in the world. 
The first is, What am I? The second, Where am I? Not 
until these are answered can w r e be ready for the farther 
query, What have I to do? — nor even approach any nearer to 
it than doubtingly if not miserably to ask, Have I indeed 
anything in particular to do? 

What am I? Our Creator himself mediately tells us that 
He " formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living 
soul." We do net read that the earth and the waters were 
commanded to bring forth man, as they were commanded to 
bring forth the inferior tribes of animated nature. Man has 
indeed an animal nature ; and it is even possible that by " the 
dust of the earth " from which he is so far said to derive his 
origin, some or all of these inferior tribes may be intended. 
But it is at least clear that the animal nature is not, never 
was, and, even in its most refined development, never can be, 
the man properly so called. It was only " into his nostrils" 
that " the Lord God breathed the breath of life," and he con- 
sequently, and he alone, " became a living soul," however 
closely those inferior creatures may often imitate the expres- 
sion of a spiritual life ; or however largely he may himself 
5 D 47 



4§ PRIMARY PROBLEMS. 

sometimes retain the appearance, after having sinfully for- 
saken the reality, and so become spiritually dead. 

It is not necessary for us now to consider particularly the 
history of the fall of our first parents, and of the salvation 
which is to be found in Him who is called the Second Adam. 
It is sufficient for our present purpose to observe that inas- 
much as the Soul is the distinguishing principle of manhood, 
the Body with all its graces and powers is to be viewed as an 
appendage or parasite to the soul, rather than the soul to it, 
as we are too apt hastily to assume. The soul is the sub- 
stance, and the body the shadow, rather than the reverse, as 
young people especially are in danger of thinking. Let us 
then consider our first query sufficiently answered, for the 
present at least, by saying that We are souls. 

The next inquiry is, Where are we? To this I think it 
enough at present to reply, that as souls or spiritual beings, 
we are each of us in this state of existence tied and confined, 
more or less closely, to a set of thoughts which we call the 
mind, which again is tied or confined to the earthen taber- 
nacle which each recognizes as his individual body. It is a 
solemn truth that we are naturally prisoners ; but it is evi- 
dently a hopeful alleviation of our fate, that our prison-house 
is not. except it be by our own choice, the solitary cell of an 
individual body or an individual mind, but that we are mer- 
cifully allowed upon trial the range of the common realm of 
our fallen nature, and of the earth which partakes of our 
ancestral curse. In this common prison-house, therefore, as 
we faithfully explore it for the means of escape, we will be 
surely privileged to find companionship and sympathy in our 
search, until all the fetters of individuality and spiritual sloth- 
fulness shall be shaken off. by the blessing of God upon our 
persistent devotion. 

The answer to our third query has been thus somewhat 
anticipated. Our appointed work, we are disinterestedly 
assured by those who have worked and triumphed before our 
time, is to glorify God, and to ensure our own eternal happi- 



PRIMARY PROBLEMS. 49 

ness by escaping from the bondage of our inherited nature : 
and that no one ma) 7 be at a loss for want of explicit direc- 
tion, each one of us is also commanded, u Whatsoever thy 
hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. " Let us finish our 
present inquiry with a brief consideration of this ancient text. 
" Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might." All sorts of work, we see, are thus thrown together, 
and all sorts of people, with the single stipulation that all 
shall bring earnestness to their work. We are left to infer 
that by this simple means, confusion and waste of labor will 
be more surely avoided, than by any amount of anxious con- 
trivance. " Surely," it has been said, u man is a shadow, 
and life a dream." We so readily forget the evanescence 
and comparative insignificance of all worldly interests, that 
we often distinguish and choose too carefully between the 
different degrees and kinds of knowledge and labor, and may 
sometimes even exaggerate the diversities of age and station. 
We are thus apt both to shut our eyes upon the glorious sim- 
plicity of all truth, and to lose the strength which is ever to 
be derived from the essential unity of all true manhood. 
Let us rest assured that earnest co-operation will always en- 
sure progress, though it be as the corn grows, " a man know- 
eth not how." 



THE RELIGION OF LABOR. 



A faith in common is a shrine of prayer, 
To which true comrades for relief repair, 
And banish doubt and disagreement there. 

Communities find thus a real bond, 

To which all hearts with kindred pulse respond, 

And gathered strength, all parted strength beyond. 

But private life needs oft its lesser tie — 
A bond which infant faith will not supply, 
On which each man may constantly rely. 

'Tis true, if private faith were clear and strong, 
Life would be worship, and its work a song 
Which every change of scene would but prolong. 

But faith appears to need its time to grow ; 

And in its non-age will require the show 

Of ready forms, through which its force may flow. 

Thus then in daily life the need we find 
For crude routine, man's purposes to bind 
To healthful ways, for body, soul and mind. 

Then, with the very reverence of the kirk, 
From rude aggression, and from captious quirk, 
Protect thy neighbor in his lawful work ! 



50 



MIND AND MONEY CONSIDERED AS 
CURRENCIES. 



" Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth under- 
standing ; for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, 
and the gain thereof than fine gold." — Prov. iii. 13, 14. 

" Words and money are both to be regarded as only marks of things." — 
Berkeley : The Guardian, No. 77. 

[Note by the Author : I deem it only prudent, in consideration of some 
coincidence in the line of argument, to notify the reader that this essay was 
written before the appearance in England of the ingenious and learned work 
entitled, The Gay Science, by E. M. Dallas.] 

THE intelligent observer and actor will hardly need to be 
told, in this age of enlightenment, that there are two 
principal sorts of currency in the world. By currency I mean, 
as everybody means, something which represents wealth or 
the objects of enjoyment. Enjoyment, although often itself 
loosely spoken of as an object, and pursued as such, and al- 
though indeed practically one of the most manifest of realities, 
is yet theoretically one of the most indefinable and inscrutable 
of mysteries. It is therefore practically, or as an object of 
pursuit, identified with those more appreciable and definable 
objects of material, moral and spiritual utility, such as physi- 
cal health, corporeal food and other furniture, social influence, 
and personal character, which are the elementary ingredients 
of wealth. How far these endowments can justly be regarded 
as objects commendable or desirable in themselves, is indeed 
a question for moralists to consider, in the investigation of 
abstract truth. But until human nature shall be more gen- 
erally refined to that spiritual and unselfish life which is now 
6 * 51 



52 MIND AND MONET 

only its occasional and perhaps exceptional aspect, these ele- 
mentary endowments, it may be assumed, will be the objects 
rather than the means of its aspirations — its wealth rather 
than its currencies. It becomes therefore our more immediate 
duty to acquaint ourselves with the actual currencies or means 
which practically serve as representatives and vehicles of the 
recognized wealth which they themselves never are. It must 
be admitted, indeed, that the materials of currency may be- 
come immediate articles of wealth as thus defined ; yet as 
this can only occur and continue while they are withdrawn 
from use as currency, such a liability cannot vitiate the dis- 
tinction which is ever obvious to the conscious agent, between 
his purposed object and his actual means. To be more ex- 
plicit, therefore, I propose merely to treat of currencies, as 
currencies. 

It appears, then, that the two kinds of currency or means 
which we have to consider, must resemble one another in 
having no immediate or intrinsic usefulness or value ; but one 
which depends entirely upon the circumstances that they are, 
in a mode which only experience can fully explain, a sort of 
heralds or handles for things which have use or value, and 
which are wealth. They are alike also in the circumstance 
that they are both capable of being indefinitely multiplied, 
and that as it were spontaneously, so that the supply is ever, 
upon the whole, increased according to the demand, by the 
very rise of the demand, as well as on the other hand dimin- 
ished by its decline. — Take these assertions upon faith, for an 
instant, gentle reader! if some of them appear at first sight 
to be paradoxical. — They are alike, again, in the circumstance 
that both may be counterfeited, and so in some degree sup- 
planted by a base currency. They are alike, also, inasmuch 
as their availability or conventional usefulness appears to 
be alike dependent upon definite deficiencies in the natural 
powers of the human race, and therefore alike destined to 
be limited by the period which shall limit the natural im- 
perfectness of which those deficiencies are a part. There is 



CONSIDERED AS CURRENCIES. 53 

vet another circumstance of similarity which may seem to 
have demanded an earlier place in the list; but as I do not 
attempt to be either complete or very systematic in my ac- 
count, I will mention it here, at whatever risk of producing 
it out of due time. This last circumstance is the fact, that 
although both of them are only known and realized as they 
n ay seem to be private property, and are held in the heads 
or hands of individuals, they are not essentially either of them 
private property, even while withheld, as they sometimes are 
under the infatuation of a short-sighted policy, from their 
proper service as currency ; but are even then merely stand- 
ing, instead of moving representatives, of some form of that 
true wealth, in the accumulation or command of which alone, 
private property can consist. Strictly speaking they are both 
of them, from beginning to end, public institutions, or private 
only in so far as all public interests may seem to have a pri- 
vate origin and application. Cautious reader ! let us pause 
before proceeding closely to examine these vague enuncia- 
tions, in order to assure ourselves that we are thinking to- 
gether upon one ground of thought, and with the same sub- 
ject-materials. 

The two species of currency I am attempting to compare 
are called severally, Ideas, and Money. Both of them are 
articles which it may be rather difficult at first thought to 
define, owing to the reckless manner in which both are tam- 
pered with by officious meddlers, or by those who have been 
taught to think that such meddlings are legitimate and pro- 
ductive branches of industry. These intrusions, however, are 
in their nature self-limited. A crisis, as it is called, moral or 
monetary, breaks out from time to time, as sudden, perhaps, 
and seemingly capricious as a vernal shower, or as a novel 
freak of Parisian costume, and sweeps the clogging grievances 
from their nestling-place, almost as kindly as the cleansing 
stream which glides, impotent for evil, from the plumage of 
the plunging water-fowl. In general terms, these currencies 
may both be defined as consisting of certain materials in con- 



54 MIND AND MONET 

nection with certain impressions or patterns which determine 
the size and appearance of the material as tendered. The 
materials in both cases are in themselves permanent or inde- 
structible, and, as prepared for service, are powerful according 
to the amount of weight, physical or metaphysical, which may 
be thrown into the pieces at the time of their issue. These 
two circumstances are those which are of fundamental im- 
portance ; the form of tine impressions being in both cases 
more or less arbitrary and variable, although it also is adven- 
titiously necessary as an intelligible certificate that the whole 
tiling is actually a piece of currency of a certain value. The 
material of the kind which w r e name Ideas, is crude or latent 
Thought: but as the term u Thought'' is so commonly used 
to signify a defined and transferable idea, it may be well here 
to derive another name from its physiological relations, and to 
designate this crude material by the name of Brain, with the 
proviso that we thereby intend only the element, or quality, 
or function of brain, which must be common to all thinkers 
who are capable of holding correspondence with each other. 
The material for money is not quite so definitely and exclu- 
sively provided for man by the hand of the Creator, inasmuch 
as this form of currency is not so entirely a Providential and 
indispensable institution as the other, having been left more 
largely to the ordering of human invention, so that there is 
more room for selection from the various materials of nature. 
The only materials, however, which we need here note are 
those elementary substances which are styled a the precious 
metals ;" and of these the metal Gold may be named as a 
convenient and here sufficient representative : the rest are too 
familiarly known to require any notice now, beyond the re- 
mark, that the principles which regulate the employment of 
gold as currency, are alike applicable to them as currency, 
since they are, so far, nothing more nor less than gold diluted, 
as it were, in different degrees of strength. 

Patient reader ! let us now briefly review and more 
particularly consider the points of resemblance, paradox- 



CONSIDERED AS CURRENCIES. 55 

ical or not paradoxical, which we lately remarked upon col- 
lectively. 

First: that of no intrinsic value. Mere brain, and mere 
gold — alike glittering, it may be, and in their very pliancy 
tenacious of their native coherency, but intrinsically cold, 
heavy, lifeless and barren — how impotent of themselves to 
feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, 
or to cheer the faint or heal the wounded heart ! Little, 
surely, of confirmation is called for here. The adventitious 
importance or availability is scarcely even temporarily im- 
parted to the coin concerned in either case, being rather 
imputed by a necessary submission to the metaphvsical unity 
of the law of perception in the one, and in the other by the 
voluntary establishment of an artificial uniformity upon the 
consent of custom. It may seem, indeed, that there here 
occurs a serious diversity between the two currencies, to the 
disparagement of the currency of ideas. Thought, as cur- 
rency, may at first sight seem to be less deserving of attention 
and care, because it may seem that the portion used is not 
sacrificed in the using, as is the case with the currency of 
money. Since the holder or user while conveying it to 
others appears to retain as much of it as he parts with, or 
rather to part with none of it, its importance as an object of 
solicitude may appear to be less urgent inasmuch as the pos- 
session of it is thus apparently more secure in its very nature. 
In other words the communication of thought appears to be 
different from that of gross matter, and rather like that of 
flame, in which the lighting of a fresh torch does not extin- 
guish that already burning : whereas in conveying the other 
kind of currency, whether it be for a satisfactory considera- 
tion or not, one wholly relinquishes possession of the amount 
transferred ; so that this, 'it may appear, being the only fugi- 
tive form of currency, has at least upon that account a posi- 
tive value, and requires to be guarded with greater vigilance. 
The comparison thus drawn, however, is unjust ; and the 
appearance a deceptive one. There is a difference in the 



56 MIND AND MONET 

two cases, but it points in the opposite direction. The real 
difference, as well as the seeming one, springs from the fact 
that the currency of money, being once coined, is good for an 
indefinite period, and for an indefinite number of transac- 
tions ; so that that which comes into the hand may serve in 
the place of that which goes out ; while the coin of Thought, 
having been once used, is thenceforth useless until it shall be 
again passed through the mint of the brain, except in so far 
as it may happen to obtain a conventional permanence and 
value by " passing into a proverb," and so become a speci- 
men of credit-currency comparable to " paper money." As 
" circumstances alter cases," an apposite idea is (if we may 
coin a word for the present occasion) un-coined by the lapse 
of the occasion to which it was strictly appropriate, and re- 
turned into the bullion-state or raw material of crude thought : 
and this can be effectually re- converted into the intellectual 
coin, only at the moment when it is wanted for use, since in 
that way only can it adequately meet the then present cir- 
cumstances and obligations, and justly assume the dignity 
and influence of undoubted currency. While, therefore, the 
only solicitude needful, in regard to the currency of gold, is, 
that the agent should keep himself within the region of action 
in which its motion is indeed one of circulation and not one 
of mere outflow ; with regard to the currency of brain, there 
is the additional call for that care in adapting the issue to the 
occasion, which may make it efficient in all cases precisely 
according to the demands of the occasion. The importance 
consequent upon practical fugaciousness is thus really assign- 
able to the currency of mind in a greater degree than to that 
of money. 

Second: that the supply of either currency is simply de- 
pendent upon the demand, and as it were produced by the 
demand. — With regard to the development of mind which 
constitutes the supply of brain-currency, this position is suffi- 
ciently illustrated and fortified by those pioneer, and therefore 
often forgotten, principles of metaphysics and of common 



CONSIDERED AS CURRENCIES. 57 

sense ; first, that the actual demand for thoughts on any 
known subject is the unequivocal expression of a power to 
produce such thoughts ; and second, that an unknown subject 
must ever be, at the best, but as a mystical phantom lying 
out of the reach either of thought or of definite desire, until 
the mind is placed, so to speak, in a situation near enough 
and clear enough for its partial or complete apprehension ; that 

is, until it becomes partly or wholly a known subject. 

The adjustment of the supply to the demand of the act- 
ual money which for convenience we have styled gold-cur- 
rency, may be influenced accidentally by extraneous causes, 
such for example, as the timely expansion of the supply of 
bullion in our own age : but here as in the former case its 
own laws are at least generally sufficient for the purpose, al- 
though operating somewhat more indirectly than those which 
regulate the u floating capital" of mind. An increased de- 
mand not extraneously provided for, will increase the supply 
by first reducing the size of coins, so that the conventional 
value of the whole mass of currency shall be augmented to 
an equality with the want of the community. Under a de- 
creased demand, this process would of course be simply 
reversed. 

Third : that they may both be counterfeited. — Surely there 
is nothing paradoxical in this, melancholy as the allegation 
may well appear ! Base coin is not seldom " uttered" in the 
place of money : — and still oftener the crude or corrupt conceit 
of an undeveloped or unsound intellect makes its appearance 
as a spurious brain-material, which assumes in its outflow 
such a superficial adaptation to acknowledged needs, or such 
a vague resemblance to ideal realities, as forms it into decep- 
tive notions — mere notions or counterfeit ideas. Books and 
banks, it must here be observed, among other links of like- 
ness, are too apt to become the lurking-places and strong- 
holds of the corruptions of currency which ensue in either 
case, when the means are coveted and cherished as ends. 

Fourth : that they are both of only temporary importance, 



53 MIND AND MONET 

as being agencies which compensate for imperfections in the 
present nature of mankind.- — A man's earnings are his wages. 
These wages are essentially merely the claims which he has 
upon the wealth of the world, for having in some measure 
done his duty to the world, as in the sight of the divine 
Maker and rightful Master of the world. Money is originally 
valuable to its holder only as being an efficient evidence or 
recognized law by which the world at large, so far as he may 
be brought into contact with it, is made to perceive and re- 
gard those claims until they are fairly met and canceled. 
And it remains to be truly valuable under all the sophistica- 
tions and perversions of custom, only in so far as it is still 
available for this purpose. It is thus at best a mere substitute, 
and too often a lame one, for that clear and honest memory on 
the one part, and for that perfect insight and openness on the 
other, which would render such a guarantee superfluous by 
directly manifesting and promptly ensuring all rightful in- 
dividual claims. A man's thoughts as held by memory are 

the mere record of the impressions which he has derived and 
deduced from his experience in the world, and are accordingly 
tinctured with all the imperfections or peculiarities (these 
terms being here wholly synonymous) of his powers of ob- 
servation. When these disabilities shall be escaped from, 
there will be no farther occasion for memory, since he will 
see all things and judge all events, which claim his atten- 
tion, as they really are, without overlooking any of the cir- 
cumstances or relations which recollection and study are now 
called upon to supply so imperfectly. In other words, thought 
and memory will both be lost or merged in pure insight, and 
discussion, in pure communion. 

Fifth : that they are both public property, and of private 
applicability only so far as private interests are tributary to 
public interests.-- rThis proposition is obviously to some extent 
involved in the one last considered. Not only, however, is 
money originally the silent exponent and passive administrator 
of an otherwise latent and abortive law ; but legislation ex- 



CONSIDERED AS CURRENCIES. 59 

pressly adopts it as a public institution, by guarding the in- 
tegrity of the coinage, and by otherwise securing to it that 
authority which unstudied custom primarily bestows in recog- 
nizing the universality of natural rights to the accumulations 
of actual wealth as private property. The public obligation 
thus incurred is, indeed, often spurned or slighted by those 
most nearly concerned, who are apt to be more pleased w 7 ith 
the influence so derived, than anxious to appreciate the origin 
and nature of their title to it. For an authority which is 
confessedly derived entails the idea of responsibility in some 
direction, and this is sure to become irksome to capricious 
tempers. Happily, however, bright examples may almost 
always be found of the great understanding and the patient 
spirit* w 7 hich can cheerfully accept the public rank thus im- 
parted as an occasion of responsibility as well as a means 

of power. In the currency of Ideas, as has already been 

observed, peculiarities are necessarily imperfections, pure 
thought being wholly impersonal or dividual in its character. 
It is, indeed, by virtue of its inherent dependence upon the 
supreme Spirit of Love, at once absolute power and perfect 
impartiality, and so the very substance and essence of all law. 
Private interpretation is obviously incompatible w r ith such an 
institution as this ; and the pride of opinion is therefore doubt- 
less yet more insane than the pride of purse. 

Prudent reader ! let us not rashly descend into the dark 
mines of subjective research, nor linger too fondly even among 
the grateful shades and romantic beauties which disguise their 
dangerous entrance. Let us leave their precious ores and 
massive realities, with their associated stifling exhalations, 
to fulfill their own course of secret development and gradual 
revelation in obedience to the fiat of the all-sustaining and 
ever-acting Creator ; while we devote our powers to our own 
parts of duty in the more glaring and shifting but living 
scenes, which are at once the surface, the purpose and the 
superstructure of those abstract foundations. Nevertheless, 

* Prov. xiv. 29. 



6o MIND AND MONET. 

let us not too timidly turn our eyes from the meagre skeleton 
of truth which thence bursts forth upon our passing gaze, nor 
regard it as but the monstrous creature of a dream, or a thing 
essentially devoid of meaning. Surely, its dead and empty 
but inexorable form may be a fit memento of the incompe- 
tency of the bare laws of matter and of mind to meet the 
aspirations of the soul ! Surely, it points the watchful eye 
beyond and above these limitations of fate, to such an un- 
selfish rule of enjoyment, as may secure us, through life's 
protracted crisis and in the mysterious portals of death, from 
man's extremest and most typical errors, even that of the 
greedy miser, and that of the groping mystic ! 



THE AVENUES OF WEALTH. 



'Tis vain to seek for source or cause, 

Except through avenues or laws : 
And still all causes more remote appear, 
The more their outward workings are made clear. 

'Tis so with wealth : we seek its source 
Most wisely, through its open course ; 

From disappointment guarded, when we find 

Its seat still baffling the pursuit of mind. 

The senses and the appetites 

Are simple modes and ready lights, 
Through which we well may be content to reach 
Such laws of wealth as man to man can teach. 

As prime receptacles and guides, 

In these earth's happiness resides : 
And all the laws their genuine lessons urge, 
In guidance to the perfect bliss converge. 

Of light, and sound, and form, and space, 
One sense* for each conveys the grace 
To mind : the rest are but one varied touch, 
Which serves the body, not the mind as such. 

Their appetites to these belong, 

Each fitting each, or weak or strong : 
And all the senses join in one, of time, 
To which one appetite, for work, must rhyme. 

And since the healthy man is one 

In what is known and what is done, 
By curb and concert all may be controlled, 
Save morbid appetites, like that for gold. 

* Seeing, Hearing, Grasp, or Co-ordinative Touch, and Muscular Resistance, are here 
assumed, as. modes of sensation consisting in the communication of the imponderable prin- 
ciples of matter; as the others, namely, Smell, Taste, and Simple Touch, or Touch Proper, 
do, in that of its atomic substance. 

61 



THE SURFEIT OF SENTIMENT. 



"Then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call 
upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent." — Zeph. iii. 9. 

THE readers of a popular magazine* were recently en- 
tertained with a satirical article on the subject of book- 
making, entitled " The Cadmean Madness." The force of 
the argument lay in the present evident tendency of the brain- 
power of civilization to embody itself in literature, preferen- 
tially and preponderatingly over any other mode of expres- 
sion, and in the absence of any generally observed principle 
of counteraction and consequent diversion. The most purely 
intellectual mode of expression being the most inviting for 
those who are seeking the widest possible audience for in- 
tellectual revelations, word-work must with such supplant 
other sorts of labor to the exact extent in which they may 
overestimate the importance and novelty of their messages. 
Thinkers are evidently liable so to overestimate, in proportion 
as they may fail to appreciate the lasting force of the ancient 
precepts, that " there is no new thing under the sun," and 
that " wisdom crieth without ; she uttereth her voice in the 
streets." Forgetting, accordingly, that the object of the ad- 
vocate of truth is rather to clear his own hands of the blood 
of all men, than to gain proselytes to any system of doctrinal 
ideas, like the dog at the river's brink, we are prone to sacri- 
fice certain attainment in catching at imaginary advantage, 
with no other result than that of disturbing the otherwise 
placid current of social thought. Past and present experience 
* The Atlantic Monthly, XI v. 265. 
62 



THE SURFEIT OF SENTIMENT. 63 

might seem to prove that " all the Lord's people"* cannot 
hope to be " prophets," without incurring the fate of the dis- 
appointed quadruped, and filling the channels of mental 
communication with wasted materials of nutriment. 

A little reflection must discover the truth that this is one of 
those superficial evils which may be said to cure themselves. 
One of the older Biblical books sufficiently indicates the 
manner in which, to the end of time, all additions to the re- 
vealed code were to be made. The good word must be 
" fitly spoken." Truth is never in such desperate danger 
that it is necessary to sacrifice decency for its safety. Adap- 
tations of mode, and time, and place, are all essential to a 
genuine prophecy. The true teacher of men will no more 
cater to popular tastes in his choice of phraseology, than he 
will hasten his utterance in deference to current apprehen- 
sions of a famine of the Word, or than he will attempt to 
reach the antipodes with the sound of his voice. Compar- 
ison, that never failing light of worldlings, will clearly enough 
and soon enough manifest the difference between the false 
teacher and the true ; and the instinctive tendency of every 
human soul " to see itself as others see it," will complete the 
cure. Let us rest assured that no Malthusian theories are 
necessary to stifle the progeny of mind, and that no literature 
can permanently prevail which is not built upon " thoughts 
that breathe," and composed of " words that burn." 

* Num. xi. 29. 
6* E 



ECCENTRICITIES. 



As springs of action are the strength of life, 
So inward discord fosters outward strife : 
The lack of concert in our thoughts and aims 
Supports the only grief which rightly shames. 

To hopes concentred in the Highest Good, 
All scenes and changes lend a genial food, 
As ripening ears could erst the hunger stay 
Of Truth's disciples plucking by the way. 

Upon that Rock of refuge such repose, 
From which the crystal current ever flows 
Which fills with harmony each faithful soul, 
And quickens all into a healthy whole. 

Alas ! that such rich boon should e'er be spurned— 
That boon on Calvary's height divinely earned 
For all who imitate the Heavenly Will 
Which wrought its wondrous work by being still. 

But since the olden taint infects these frames 
Until that miracle their waste reclaims, 
The willing spirit may perchance obey 
The while the body lingers on the way. 

Feelings and powers combined our nature throng ; 
Each sense acute implies an impulse strong. 
Some strong, some weak, in connate pairs they move, 
And all our foibles by their frolics prove. 

One finds temptation in the love of smiles ; 
Another, meat more readily beguiles ; 
One works with words to rivet rules well-known ; 
While one may seem to be a faultless drone. 
64 



HEALTHY ZEST. 



" Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, shall 
in no wise enter therein." — Luke xviii. 17. 

CHILDHOOD and youth are vanity." All the graces 
of the outward creation, being fugitive in their nature, 
must ever be sources of disappointment to those whose natural 
desires are not subjected to that spiritual and self-forsaking 
faith, by which the precarious enjoyment of the present is 
made subservient to the sure hope of the future. Only by 
virtue of the genuine industry which thus begins from within, 
can the enslaving and separating power of fleshly lust be ex- 
changed for the emancipating and uniting power of spiritual 
love, and the soul be qualified for communion with the en- 
compassing cloud of witnesses who are secretly exhorting it 
to " look through nature up to nature's God. v 

But although childhood or youth is thus necessarily defina- 
ble as an evanescent and deceptive aspect of life, the revela- 
tion of the present unites with the testimony of the past in 
asserting, that it is upon the whole an enduring and control- 
ling influence. As an aspect of universal nature at least, it 
is permanent ; and no other natural j)henomenon i s found to 
embody at once so charmingly and so powerfully, the Divine 
Wisdom which is both ancient and new. As mankind make 
the kingdom of heaven the goal of their worldly career, they 
will doubtless ever have occasion to advert to the language of 
the latest childhood as one of the latest voices from heaven. 

There is in the loose philosophy and theology of childhood, 
but little of the mystical element which characterizes the more 

65 



66 HEALTHY ZEST. 

coherent theories of our later years. The creed of boys and 
girls is prevailingly of a practical cast. The primary power 
of external perception, which is led by rambling desire and 
fed by spontaneous sensation, is more vivid with them than 
the secondary one of ideal comparison, which depends rather 
upon steadfast attention and deliberate recollection. Abstract 
principles are by them either unattainable, or are seized with 
a directness of intuition which the intervention of words could 
only obscure. What is universally plausible to them, is likely 
to be indisputably true. 

Children are pre-eminently social beings. Their very bash- 
fulness may be regarded as but an expression of their love for 
the society from which they are morbidly afraid of excluding 
themselves, by failure in performing their part as members 
of the social compact. If anything, therefore, in the spon- 
taneous policy of childhood is pre-eminently deserving of 
consideration by manhood, such must be the rule, if the rule 
can be found, by which they maintain so largely that pacific, 
and yet commanding grace of sociability, of which manhood 
so often and so readily loses, not only the possession, but the 
appreciation. 

There is one, and only one, invariable ground of exclusion 
from the privileges of youthful society. He who " cannot 
take fun," and he alone, is the universal outlaw. This is 
evidentlv not because children especially delight in inflicting 
pain or in imputing shame ; but because they well know, 
without an appeal to abstractions, that the maker of sport 
will make himself more ridiculous than the taker of it, if he 
forsakes that ground of plausibility to their unsophisticated 
perceptions, which is generally identical with the ground of 
truth. The morbidly sensitive culprit is condemned by them, 
substantially because he prefers a transient and relaxing re- 
pose in the hallucinations of self-hood, to the more enduring 
and invigorating joy which they find upon the field of external 
nature, in the pursuit of fellowship, if not in the positive sac- 
rifice of self. 



HEALTHY ZEST, 67 

It must be acknowledged, however, that even the rule of 
sociability is one rather of compromise than of comprehen- 
sion. The fellowship which is not based upon self-sacrificing 
Love, must originate in a supreme regard for individual com- 
fort, however enlarged may be its appreciation of the natural 
sources of that comfort. Society, being a sure means of hap- 
piness only as it may supply individual deficiency in the pur- 
suit of truth and performance of duty, must disappoint the 
expectation of those who make it the ultimate object of pur- 
suit. Limiting their aspirations for good by the measure of 
past experience, such must sooner or later find their moral 
development outstripped by that of more youthful or more 
self-sacrificing associates, and become in their turn the objects 
of reproach or of pity. The pursuit of pleasure even here 
cannot safely in any degree supplant that of duty. In social 
converse, as in every other species of occupation, there may 
be an eager catching at comfort, which must be compensated 
for by the hearty taking of shame, even though it come in the 
form of open ridicule or rebuke, before the lover of pleasure 
can rank with the lovers of truth. Apparent lapses or actual 
short-comings may occur even in those who have u bought 
the truth," by reason of constitutional infirmity, as age shall 
blunt the perceptions and exhaust the powers of body and 
mind which have been authoritatively and comprehensively 
characterized as. the " earthen vessel," and through which 
alone the flow of their spiritual life can be manifested to mor- 
tal eyes. But although their innocency of purpose may thus 
fail to prevent inconsistency of conduct, a watchful humility 
will secure such from surprise and confusion upon the occa- 
sion of its exposure ; and their steadfast patience will then 
demonstrate that they have indeed not lost " the dew of their 
youth." Far otherwise must it be with the unhappy com- 
promisers who are at once unavoidably sensitive to ridicule, 
and willfully ignorant of those spiritual riches, which infin- 
itely surpass the transferable treasures of intellectual and sen- 
sual experience. Anxious, it may be, both to " endure hard- 



68 HEALTHY ZEST. 

ness " and to taste pleasure, they can do neither, because their 
love even of social converse and human approbation, is only 
another name for selfishness. Having never submitted to the 
righteous fear which would induce self-denial, and would end 
in self-sacrifice, they are necessarily strangers to the restoring 
and sustaining Love which is another name for the Divine 
Source and Substance of all blessings. Rashly expending 
the light and life which have been lent to them as an earnest 
of promised good, in closing the doors and windows of their 
hearts against the influence of heavenly grace, they are so far 
necessarily incurring the doom of " the blackness of darkness 
for ever." 

The Light of Divine Love is an all-penetrating as well as 
an all-powerful agency on behalf of its devoted observers. It 
is not only their rule of action, but also the rule by which 
they judge of actions. " He that doeth truth cometh to the 
light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are 
wrought in God." In it alone can we hope fully to harmon- 
ize fact with theory. In it the errors and infirmities of the 
creature will not be allowed to withstand the progress of uni- 
versal truth, nor the fancied dignity of human character to 
enter into competition with the glory of the beneficent and 
omnipresent Creator and Saviour. u Wisdom crieth with- 
out, she uttereth her voice in the streets." The inexhaustible 
treasury of Eternal Truth is ever open to those who bring 
childlike candor to the work of investigation and demonstra- 
tion. " In thy light," said the royal Psalmist, " we shall see 
light." So, in the language of the immediate heir of his dig- 
nity and wisdom, " The path of the just is as the shining 
light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day." 
So also, the blessed Antitype of all sublunary royalty, who is 
at once the Captain of Salvation and the Prince of Peace, in 
his human person enjoined, " Walk in the light while ye have 
the light, that ye may be the children of the light." Let us 
also, in contemplation of the almost equal delusiveness and 
transitoriness of mental and of physical attainments, as com- 



HEALTHY ZEST. 69 

pared with the ineffable graces of spiritual life, remember the 
prayer and injunction of the apostle to the Gentiles, and the 
warning of the mother of Jesus ; — " That God may give unto 
you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, the eyes of your 
understanding being enlightened, that ye may know what is 
the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of 
his inheritance in the saints." " Charge them that are rich 
in this world that they be not high-minded, nor trust in un- 
certain riches, but in the living God who giveth us richly all 
things to enjoy." " He hath filled the hungry with good 
things ; and the rich he hath sent empty away." 



EQUANIMITY. 



As sun-down rays seem loosely to ascend 
Expanding from the zenith to the poles, 

Anon to stay their flight, and earthward bend, 
Although no earthly tie their course controls ; 

So human life hath its meridian-line, 

Beyond whose vault the hope may never climb 

Of him, who bears not in his heart's design 

The scenes which lie beyond the world of time. 

The amplest sky which bounds the worldling's ken, 
Is but the glancing from the general mind 

Of that pervading light, in which true men 
Fulfill the high career by God designed. 

Its loftiest goal is thus a finite aim : 

A talent buried in the earth, its wealth : 

And by its dark horizon veiled in shame, 
Its hopes ambitious disappear with stealth. 

And, to the sense which reads them from below, 
Those earnest aspirations show like fate, 

By which the freeman seeks all truth to know,* 
And marks its bearing on the world's estate. 

But as to eyes with unrestricted reach 

Which could above the mists of earth emerge, 

The constant beams another view would teach, 
In that they neither scatter nor converge ; 

So can the soul unfettered trace the course 

By which the Christian proves his lifelong aim, 

As undisturbed by the degrading force 
Of rash ambition and retreating shame. 

* " He will guide you into all truth." John xvi. 13. 



70 



THE CRIMINALITY OF COVETOUSNESS. 



" Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous ; but who is able to stand before 
envy ?" — Prov. xxvii. 4. 

I DOUBT not that other students of the morality of the 
Apostle Paul have felt with me some temporary surprise, 
in contemplation of the emphasis with which he condemns 
covetousness, as a sin which is not to be named among pro- 
fessing Christians. The ready inference I think is, that he 
considered it so glaring a fault, that it should not be even 
thought of as a possible thing among such people. After 
allowing for the fact that the profession of a spiritual faith 
was a less fashionable, and therefore a more significant thing 
then than it may now be, I think that others than myself 
among the modern readers of the " weighty and powerful 
letters," must have been at a loss to appreciate his language 
on this subject, so long as they may have regarded the covet- 
ousness of that age as identical with the mere desire of pecu- 
niary accumulation so common in our own. A slight com- 
parison of the social organization and institutions of these so 
distant epochs, must, I think, suffice to suggest a material 
change in the meaning of the term. 

The simple truth of the matter I conceive to be, that the 
" covetousness" of that day was more inseparable from the 
tiint of jealousy and envy, than is our modern "acquisitive- 
ness." Although considerations of worldly wealth then doubt- 
less had a large influence in defining the social position of 
individuals, there was not then the same interval which we 
now find between the extremes of the social scale. There 
7 71 



72 THE CRIMINALITY OF COVETOUSNESS. 

were neither moneyed corporations for the investment and 
seeming secretion of surplus capital, nor eleemosynary insti- 
tutions for the systematic support of an outcast, pauper popu- 
lation. Neither redundancy nor destitution seems to have been 
possible to the extent in which they prevail in our more com- 
plicated, if not more artificial, state of society. The money- 
seeker accordingly had neither the plea which he now finds 
on the one hand, in the fear of destitution and disgraceful 
dependence ; nor that which is no less certainly, though per- 
haps more vaguely, presented on the other hand, in the con- 
sideration that the mysterious gain which he grasps at is as 
yet, practically, the property of nobody in particular. To 
seek for an increase of wealth otherwise than by a direct 
development of natural resources, was therefore then more 
obviously than now, to plot to deprive another man of that 
which was justly his own, without any extenuating pretext of 
necessity. The only conceivable pretext being the love of 
social pre-eminence for its own sake, or some still baser desire 
whose fulfillment must involve manifest loss and consequent 
degradation to a fellow r -being, I cannot avoid the inference 
that jealousy or envy is really the vice, which, under the name 
of covetousness, is permanently branded as infamous in the 
third verse of the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians. 



INTEREST. 



True language is a valid thing 
To him who cares to know it, 

Making the very parrot sing, 
And seem to be a poet. 

But emptily, or shamefully, 

The forms of language flourish, 

For him who will not deign to see 
The lessons they would nourish. 

His dictionary binding him 

With literal injunctions, 
He counts it but an idle whim, 

That speech hath living functions. 

To some words, such as Interest, 

He finds a plural meaning ; 
And grieves that things are ill-exprest, 

Though loth to seem o'er-weening. 

Ah no ! let none be over-wise ! 

Much wisdom knows much sorrow. 
But still, 'twere well some small supplies 

To own, where none can borrow. 

And Interest means, a profit pure ; 

The food of strength and beauty ; 
An income from investment sure ; 

A consequence of duty. 

All interest is and ever shall 

Be one, as thus we learn it ; 
And principle and. principal 

May well unite to earn it. 



73 



CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 



"According to your faith be it unto you." — Matt. ix. 29. 
"These things have I spoken unto you . . . that your joy might be full." 
— John xv. ii. 

THE famous maxim of Aristotle, that " Nature abhors a 
vacuum," may be regarded as the nearest substitute 
which his sagacity could supply for the simple and sublime 
doctrine of the omnipresence of God in nature. 

Physics and Met- mi L \ * • i i 1 

. . I he atmosphere was not indeed unknown to 

aphysics. r 

him ; but being known only upon the princi- 
ple of comparison as an element of unbounded freedom, he 
could not readily conceive of its being subject to any princi- 
ple of constraint within itself. It was even occasionally re- 
garded in the elaborate but loose system of Grecian mythol- 
ogy, as the very embodiment of the Supreme Being. The 
idea of its being a passive subject of mechanical force is 
plainly irreconcilable with a view which exalted it to the 
dignity of an abstract law, if not to a divine independence 
of law- 
It was thus that this master of physical philosophy account- 
ed in the realm of physics, for the universal phenomenon of 
all existence, that capacity implies craving. The more in- 
veterate difficulties of metaphysicians in defining the funda- 
mental principles of their science, seem to have originated in 
a somewhat similar mode ; the principal difference lying in 
the accession of an independent will to the dependent capa- 
city, and the consequent complication of all subordinate phe- 
nomena. Consciousness, apart from volition, is evidently 
74 



CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 75 

nothing more than the satisfaction or disappointment of a 
craving capacity. It is the co-existence therewith of a will, 
or power of election which constitutes the conscious subject 
an influential agent, responsible, under God, to himself and 
to other intelligences for his use of that will. 

The course, if not the source, of modern 
metaphysical and theological controversy is Versatility of 

,, . n , . Faith, as the prin- 

well illustrated in the different constitutions dpie of progress. 
of the English and German national minds, 
as revealed in some discordancies in the national languages. 
In the English tongue the word Faith is not always synony- 
mous with the word Belief, being distinctively applied to the 
conventional idea of a scriptural meaning of the original 
Greek term, different from, and possibly opposed to, any be- 
lief which can arise independently of written revelation. 
The German mind appears to be either incapable of adopting 
this development of doctrine, or to reject it as a mere tech- 
nical redundancy. So far as revelation may be regarded as 
an ever new experience, practically limited only by the in- 
capacity of its recipients to appreciate its omnipresent and 
otherwise omnipotent Source, the German usage is evidently 
preferable on the grounds of independence and simplicity. 
The German tongue also ignores the English distinction of 
the scriptural " miracle," from the colloquial " wonder." 
Possibly both distinctions may have originated in an excessive 
deference, on the part of the less speculative nation, to the 
cautionary precept of the learned apostle, " not to think 
above that which is written." Surely it must be a servile, 
and in the end a suicidal, deference, which would identify 
the writing with the thing written. The one is but the visi- 
ble sign ; the other is the invisible but multiform substance. 
It is evidently this substance which the inquirer is cautioned 
against disregarding, upon the simple ground that inconsist- 
ency proves error. Capriciousness must be excluded ; but 
versatility, being essential to faith as the secret principle of 
formal development or obvious progress, is not only compat- 



76 CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 

ible with, but is actually inseparable from, the maintenance 
of spiritual truth ; and the very literalists who thus oppose it, 
most evidently condemn themselves in the thing which they 
allow. 

" Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before 
Faith definitely, q ol ^ Happy is he that condemneth not him- 

or objectively iden- 

tical with Volition, se lf * n tnat thing which he alloweth."* All 
safe theorizing concerning life and happiness 
must begin with the duties and demands of the individual 
man. An independent faith is the only faith which is scrip- 
turally endorsed as a consistent and saving faith. When, 
accordingly, we consider the fewness of the elements which 
enter into an ultimate analysis of human nature, and the rad- 
ical importance of faith as a principle of conduct, it becomes 
difficult to affix any universal value to that term, which may 
not be equally well conveyed by the more familiar term Be- 
lief, or the more precise term Volition. If belief in concep- 
tion, or volition in action, be in all cases a mere act of election 
between competing spiritual influences, its only independence 
must lie in the circumstance, that the submission of the agent 
is self-directed. Arrogance is plainly precluded by such a 
view, and responsibility is not ignored. If the power of 
divine inspiration can be thus certainly admitted and secured 
as the animating principle of characters which are most com- 
plicated in the details, and most diversified in the peculiarities, 
of their constitution, w r hat need have we to seek for any far- 
ther definition of faith, or any farther explanation of its ever 
miraculous efficacy? If truth is one and all-satisfying in its 
nature, and the power of apprehending it thus open to all 
mankind, is not every capacity and every craving, both of the 
individual and of the social nature in all men, abundantly 
provided for? What remains for any to do in their own be- 
half, but to " seek God while He may be found," to u call 
upon Him while he is near," and to " resist the Devil" that 
he may " flee from " them ? 

* Rom, xiv, 22. 



CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 77 

Let us however be always ready to prove 

r m i //- ^1 \ • i *i.i. >? htm an d Religion, with 

our faith by "that which is written. I he c . & 

- y Science. 

true fossils of language testify distinctly to the 
unity, and permanence, and ever-progressive development of a 
divine plan in the ordering of human affairs ; and their testi- 
mony to that effect is more important and more eloquent than 
that of geological revelation as to the history of the material 
world, by as much as the life of conscious mind is more noble 
than that of vegetative growth and of brute instinct. Witness 
the word of the ancient prophet* upon the true development 
of faith in w r orks, and the practical spirituality of the lesson 
of life. " Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow 
myself before the high God? Shall I come before Him with 
burnt offerings, with calves of a year old ? Will the Lord be 
pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of 
rivers of oil ? Shall I give my first born for my transgres- 
sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath 
showed thee, O man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord 
require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to 
walk humbly with thy God?" The doctrine of the native in- 
dependence of the soul is implied in the very idea of its exist- 
ence, since the very rudest conceptions of an invisible world 
must be confirmed, if not suggested, by the observed incom- 
petency of material phenomena to govern even themselves. 
The responsibility for sin, in and through the consequent 
consciousness of shame in the sinner, is the secret source of 
all the false doctrines of Atheism and Materialism. By shut- 
ting our eyes to the light of the spiritual world, we may tem- 
porarily ignore its existence, and suppress the alarm of a dis- 
turbed conscience. But the cravings of an immortal nature 
will not the less continue to be felt, and as the inevitable con- 
sequence of our self-imposed limitation w T e will then seek to 
satisfy them with the beggarly elements of outward experi- 
ence. Thus with a rebellious resistance to the divine author- 
ity of Truth as measurably manifested in the law of con- 
* Micah vi. 6, 7, 8. 



78 CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 

science, the very possibility of contentment is destroyed, and 
the willful transgressor becomes a willful complainer. The 
denial of responsibility, he finds, will not save him from the 
fate of suffering. He has no hope of happiness, save in re- 
tracing the wanderings of his will, as the despised and reject- 
ed " Sun of Righteousness " may still at his cry arise in his 
conscience u with healing in his wings." So, learning to re- 
gard the soul as the appointed custodian of his outward life, 
he will not only have to acknowledge that it has been the 
subject of sin and the seat of suffering ; but also that, as the 
body is " brought under and kept in subjection" it is redeem- 
ed from the power of the spiritual enemy, who can beset it 
only through the infirmity- of the flesh, and made a partaker 
of that kingdom which " is righteousness and peace, and joy 
in the Holy Ghost." 

" What I must do," writes a cotemporary 
mg assur- teacher, * u is the question which concerns 

ance. * 

me, and not what the people think." May we 
so keep the first principles of experience ever in view, as to 
be able not only to consult them readily in the determination 
of our own career, but to appeal to them boldly in demon- 
stration of the hope which is in us, at whatsoever risk of being 
charged with offensive dogmatism by caviling critics ! If 
we have any thing to say, let us pass by the complainers, and 
address ourselves to the inquirers as those with whom we are 
more likely to communicate to mutual advantage. " We 
cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard," 
was the testimony of Peter and John to the Jewish rulers who 
imprisoned and threatened them. " And now, Lord, behold 
their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants that with all 
boldness they may speak thy word," was the prayer of the 
Church when exulting over their release. " Finally, breth- 
ren," wrote Paul to the Thessalonians, u pray for us that the 
Word of God may have free course and be glorified . . . for 
all men have not faith." And again, to the Romans, " The 
* Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM. 79 

Word of God is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy 
heart ; that is the Word of faith which we preach." As true 
love smites but to heal, and as true hope anchors but to secure, 
so true faith binds but to emancipate from that lingering 
bondage to " the weak and beggarly elements," * from that 
still unmortified u body of death," -j- which alone hinders the 
individual members of the militant Church from realizing in 
their several measures, t; the fullness of Him that filleth all in 
all." % 

* Gal. iv. 9. t Rom. vii. 24. J Eph. i. 23. 

F 



WELFARE. 



This world's a world of work, we know, 

Who are not boys, 
But seek a life beyond its dancing show 

And thoughtless noise. 

We know the envied scene and scope 

Which wealth supplies, 
At best are but decoys, that gild with hope 

Life's sacrifice. , 

That earnest hope may we pursue, 

Or here, or there, 
Which holds our life's realities in view 

By watchful prayer ! 

Regarding too each brother's path 

And single aim, 
Who finds in freely losing all he hath, 

All he can claim. 

So may our lives of rectitude 

A chart produce, 
Which shall by after-comers be reviewed 

For blessed use. 

And as the gentle seasons roll 

Their course of praise, 
Dispensing to mankind, from pole to pole, 

Good nights and days ; 

May we, responsive to their round, 

Our learning tell, 
That they who are to duty's orbit bound 

Always fare-well ! 



80 



THE COURT OF FORTUNE. 



" It must needs be that offences come ; but Woe to that man by whom the 
offence cometh !"^Matt. xviii. 7. 

BY the happy ordination of Divine Providence, falsehood 
can never so far gain currency in the world, as to form 
part of the constitution of language. To every word there i9 
some legitimate meaning. It is by perverting it from this 
meaning alone that we can be guilty of neglecting " the form 
of sound words. " It may even be doubted whether any words 
are at all times more liable than any others to be perverted to 
the purposes of falsehood, although such occasional liability 
under the variable bias of public sentiment, is a most obvious 
index of the tendency of the social mind at particular epochs. 
Among the words which in our age are perhaps most likely 
to be thus perverted, are the nearly or quite synonymous terms, 
" fortune," and " chance.'* So familiar have these sounds be- 
come as a refuge of unbelievers in the Divine government of 
the world, that the advocates of truth are sometimes tempted 
to exclaim, u There is no such thing as chance." Surely, it is 
merely a limitation of their own vision which prevents them 
from adding, " except in subordination of an intelligent Provi- 
dence." Surely it may be nothing worse than, a still more 
narrow limitation of vision which enables their seeming ad- 
versaries to imagine not only a chance, but a blind chance. 
For any present time and occasion the Deity is such as He 
then and there reveals Himself, however harsh or however 
partial such revelation may be by comparison with his essen- 
tial attributes. This is an adaptation which is simply neces- 

81 



82 THE COURT OF FORTUNE. 

sary in condescension to our erring or limited powers of in- 
telligence. To this purport are the words of the prophet- 
king, u The Lord hath recompensed me according to my 
righteousness ; according to my cleanness in his eye-sight. 
With the merciful Thou wilt show Thyself merciful, and with 
the upright man Thou wilt show Thyself upright. With the 
pure Thou wilt show Thyself pure, and with the froward 
Thou wilt show Thyself unsavory."* There is doubtless such 
a thing as chance or fortune in the experience of bewildered 
souls, even if they be not hopelessly benighted. Nothing but 
the inward light of grace, can thoroughly reveal the outward 
course of Providence ; and until we can profess its clear gui- 
dance, let us not indiscriminately decry the vicegerency of 
Fortune, however justly we may occasionally protest that we 
thereby mean the Power of Providence. As all earthly in- 
stitutions are the temporary abodes of power, there is one 
institution which may be said pre-eminently to claim the title 
of the Court of Fortune. 

It is a common saying that they who have taken upon them- 
selves the responsibilities of matrimony, have given " pledges 
to fortune." It is evident that they make themselves increas- 
ingly answerable to the communitv for their conduct, and in- 
creasingly dependent upon its indulgence for everything which 
may be called a " breach of the peace." They assume an 
obvious external dignity, which is to be secured only by the 
support of an internal intelligence, or by a careful subordina- 
tion to other dignitaries who are possessed of such intelli- 
gence. The love of truth as the source of order, will make 
them independent dignitaries ; or the love of order as dis- 
tinguished from truth, may make them for a while dependent 
dignitaries : but in matrimony, as in every other realm of life, 
integrity of purpose must confer a dignity of some degree, the 
obvious want of which must eventually cover with shame the 
reckless adventurer in its domain. By entering into the mar- 
ried state an individual so manifestly publishes his incompe- 
* 2 Sam. xxii. 25-27. 



THE COURT OF FORTUNE. 83 

tency for an independent life, that it is difficult indeed to 
imagine another court in which he can be bound in so heavy 
a bail u to keep the peace." Opportunities, also, here so co- 
incide with interest, that the preservation of social harmony 
may be said to be pre-eminently the function of the married 
portion of the community. 

If the keeping of the peace be thus the great business of 
matrimony, must not every motive thereto be a deceptive and 
injurious one, which does not originate in the comprehensive 
disinterestedness of unselfish love? How especially import- 
ant is it that they who are contemplating an entrance upon its 
distracting cares, should first carefully study in all things u the 
form of sound words," with a view to the proper restraint of 
that member which is so easily " set on fire of hell," and 
which then " setteth on fire the course of nature !" No other- 
wise can they hope to realize that serviceable fortune, which 
will not only be a permanent protection to themselves, but 
which may increasingly qualify them on all occasions to 

" assert eternal Providence, 
And justify the ways of God to men." 
8 



THE RISK OF RANK. 



A pretty thing appears subordination, 

Not to speak of its practical use : 
And yet the seeming consequence of station 

Is the source of its common abuse. 

The fact is clearer than its rationale : 

For the top of a pyramid crests 
The joints below, as worthily as gayly, 

While it shields them from incident pests. 

But could that top, while rigid to its level, 
Be seen side wise to swerve from its place, 

It might display the work of self or Devil 
In this marvel of human disgrace. 

From base to summit union would suffer, 

And an open discordance ensue, 
When winds, erewhile quiescent, give a rougher 

Intimation of what they can do. 

And could the parts speak freely with each other, 

With the prior proviso of thought, 
The great man's contest with his humbler brother 

Might be then in their dialogue fought. 

How rails the recreant block at those below it, 
For conspiring their lord to debase ! 

And how he deems they yet more plainly show it, 
By pretending to know their own place ! 

Might some good angel timely teach him reason, 
By reminding how they were secured 

Alike from object and success in treason, 
Had they only a monarch ensured ! 



84 



THE RHETORIC OF RIDICULE. 



" In malice be ye children, but in understanding be ye men." — I Cor. 
xiv. 20. 

RIDICULE maybe regarded as the last resort of rhetoric. 
The famous Grecian expounder of ideal philosophy, 
whose familiarity with the laws and powers of rhetoric has 
perhaps never been surpassed save in the person of Him who 
" spake as never man spake," writing in the name of his 
equally famous master, thus defines the province of its opera- 
tion : " Rhetoric is of no use to us for defending our own 
injustice, or that of our friends or our country. We ought 
on the contrary to accuse ourselves in the first instance, and 
next our relatives and our friends, and not to conceal our 
transgressions, but bring them to light, that we may suffer 
punishment, and be restored to health ; not caring for the 
pain, but if we have merited stripes, giving ourselves up to 
the stripe ; if imprisonment, to the prison ; if death, to death ; 
and employing rhetoric for the accusation of ourselves and of 
those who are dear to us, that their guilt may be made mani- 
fest, and that they may be freed from the greatest of evils, that 
of injustice." * We may perhaps now conveniently comprise 
the same view in fewer words by saying, that it is the prov- 
ince of rhetoric to subordinate personal peculiarities to uni- 
versal principles, by supplanting the capriciousness of false- 
hood with the uniformity of truth. 

Principles are indeed the mighty materials w r ith which 
alone the rhetorician must seek to work ; but inasmuch as 

* Plato : Gorgias. 

85 



86 THE RHETORIC OF RIDICULE, 

convincement is his aim, persons also must be the subjects 
of his operation so far as they are the objects which may be 
impressed by the application of principles. So long as the 
circumstances and disposition of the hearer may be equally 
favorable with those of the speaker for the appreciation of 
any principle of truth which they may be engaged in inves- 
tigating, personal considerations may be wholly neglected. 
But where there is any disparity in these advantages, the 
parties will of course not see eye to eye ; and he who is 
conscious of seeing or comprehending something more than 
his associate is able to acknowledge, will be in a correspond- 
ing degree qualified to suggest to him the occasion of his lack 
of vision. So long as this lack can be accounted for by the 
difference of mere circumstances, the advocate of truth may 
still supply it under the evident guidance of principles, by 
demonstrating that difference, and by urging the influence of 
the subsidiary principles, which the circumstances in question 
may represent, upon the main topic of discussion. But when 
he finds, upon thus leading his professed associate, as it were, 
all around their subject, that there are any aspects from the 
appreciation of which he invariably shrinks as one dazzled 
with an excess of light, he has no other alternative than to 
infer that the difficulty lies in the inherent inconsistency or 
incompleteness of his companion's nature. lie is compelled 
to decide that he is not wholly a lover of light, and in the 
fraternal endeavor to correct his misapprehension, will en- 
courage him to such a right exercise of his senses, as shall 
qualify them "to discern both good and evil by reason of 
use." His only remaining means to this end will be the 
exposure, in the clearest light which he can command, of 
the inconsistency or incoherency of his comrade's views and 
professions, and so far he will have to descend from the clear 
sky of principles into the cloudy region of personalities. His 
work is still, however, not a hopeless one, since the vice of 
disposition may merely amount to such an habitual prejudice 
of mind as is comparable to a merely functional and tern- 



THE RHETORIC OF RIDICULE. 87 

porary weakness of bodily sight. If the inquirer be so sound 
at heart as to be advancing in his love for the truth, and 
" growing by the sincere milk of doctrine,'' he will patiently 
endure, and will eventually rejoice over, the transient morti- 
fication and exposure which are the means of enlarging his 
sphere of life and labor in the truth. He will be convinced 
and will not need to be convicted. He may be a temporary 
subject of the rule of ridicule, but he cannot be called its 
victim. 

Far otherwise must it be with all who stubbornly close the 
eves of their mind to the shining of the divine Light of truth. 
For such the herald of truth will sooner or later receive the 
command, u Cry aloud, spare not." As happened in olden 
time, they will ever be prone to account themselves the mo- 
nopolists of truth, and to fortify themselves in their own con- 
ceit with all the resources of reason and all the sanctions 
of tradition. But as they persist in their practical denial of 
the omnipresence of the divine Enlightener and Leader and 
Feeder of souls, they must necessarily fall into the unpardon- 
able sin of arrogating to themselves the attributes of God. 
Presuming upon past attainments, and basing their views of 
merit upon the deceitful ground of human comparison, their 
shameless assurance can be shaken by but one species of 
argument. Having abandoned the rule of harmony for that 
of discord, they are fit subjects for the law of contrast, and 
the so-called argumentum ad hominem becomes applicable 
to them, as being nothing more nor less than an exposure of 
the contrast between their profession and their practice. It 
is an exposure which may be both appreciable in itself, and 
intensified by reflection from the perception of surrounding 
beholders. It was with the argumentum ad homine?n that 
Elijah discomfited the prophets of Baal previously to their 
utter extermination ; and with it the Redeemer of men con- 
descended to expose the self-righteousness of officious and 
caviling tale-bearers. As its penalty is originally incurred 
by a desertion of principles, so its terrors must increase with 
s * 



88 THE RHETORIC OF RIDICULE. 

the progress of selfish transgression, until the rule of ridicule 
may be overtaken and justly supplanted by that of the un- 
qualified and unsympathizing pity, which is but another name 
for a righteous contempt. In conformity with apostolic doc- 
trine the unhappy victim may then be charitably neglected as 
one who is beyond the reach of rhetoric. 

Prophecy may be the language of the perfected Christian, 
but the partial modes of utterance which the Apostle Paul 
distinguished by the name of tongues must thus still have 
their place in an imperfect world, as "a sign, not to them 
that believe, but to them that believe not." tw There are, it 
may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of 
them is without signification. . . . Wherefore, brethren, covet 
to prophecy, and forbid not to speak with tongues." 



THE MISSIONARY. 



Who shall the willing witness be 

To sound the gospel mystery ? 

Who, with the standard pure unfurled, 

Will preach the grace that saves the world ? 

What, thinkest thou, awaiteth thee 
Who sayest, " Here am I, send me ! 
The fields are white, the hands are few ; 
And work is pleasure in my view." 

Thy path so plain — thy crown so sure — 
Thou seemest eager to endure 
The cross of care and brunt of strife, 
In harvesting eternal life. 

Go forth ! But, with " the things behind,' , 
Leave not that discipline of mind 
Which is begun when faith begins, — 
The timely rod for secret sins ! 

Regardful of those inner deeps 
Where every infant giant sleeps, 
Thence never wholly to depart 
Till rules the gospel all thy heart ; 

And conscious there by sympathy 

Of every brother's misery, 

Acquit thee, through life's shifting scene, 

As follower of the Nazarene ! 

And while thy labors outward flow, 
And words or acts thy message show, 
Thy all-sufficient guerdon be, 
To rise with Him who died for thee ! 

89 



CUI BONO? 



" No truth from Heaven descends upon our sphere, 
Without the greeting of the skeptic's sneer ; 
Denied and mocked at, till its blessings fall, 
Common as dew and sunshine, over all." 

Whittier. 

THE vanity of all things is the text both of the skeptic 
and of the believer. The difference between them is, 
that the one "utters all his mind," while the other u keepeth it 
in till afterward," ever retaining his hold on the material of 
thought, w r hich is the determining principle of utterance. 
The skeptic claims only to live in the apparent facts of com- 
municable or demonstrable experience, while the believer 
knows that the roots and fruits of his experience reach be- 
neath and beyond all that can be narrated to his fellow-man. 
What have you been living for? What has all your labor 
amounted to? are therefore the questions which they are 
alike prone to address to their fellow-men, when seeking to 
lead them to their own way of feeling and thinking, in view 
of the obvious variance of their practice. Each, as judged 
by the standard of the other, must obviously be guilty of a 
sort of continual suicide. 

Happily, the belief in an internal existence is identical 
with that in an eternal existence. In accordance with the 
proverb " the end crowns all," the true believer knows that 
the end of all things, so far from being the annihilation of 
life, is its consummation. By way of setting forth the futility 
of even the present efforts of his gainsayer, he can not only 
90 



CUT BONO? 91 

ask him, What has all thy labor amounted to? — but, What is 
it all amounting to? If the door of inquiry be thus opened 
for the entrance of substantial argument, he may proceed to 
testify, that it is even in vain to query what any previous 
labor has amounted to, save in so far as the gift of insight 
and forecast may qualify us in the first place to assert what 
would have been, had our course been different. The skeptic 
by ignoring such qualification is indeed enabled to ridicule 
the believer; but he purchases his temporary impunity at the 
expense of his own voluntary blindness. 

The stronghold of skepticism is thus its inevitable grave. 
Living in surfaces, it can judge only by the comparison of 
outward experience. Its preponderating regard for the pres- 
ent as masked by the material, renders it proportionally for- 
getful of the monitions of the past, and blind to the dawn of 
the future in the light of the spiritual. Counting itself prac- 
tically wise, it rushes upon that living death of ignominy, in 
which the loss of the last vestige of respect from once kindred 
souls converts even the stimulating appearance of present 
hostility into the withering reality of distant pity. The 
query, " Cut bono?" if it then shall occur to its miserable 
victims, can only occur in connection with the ironical res- 
ponse of the self-questioning seer,* 

11 Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die." 
* Young : Night Thoughts. 



TRUTH. 



Futurity were ever present, 

Were all the present but revealed. 
Adversity were not unpleasant, 

Were Truth's resources not concealed. 

There is indeed a veil of Isis, — * 

A veil which needs but to be rent, 
To manifest in every crisis 

The floods of light in darkness pent. 

And in the true crusader's struggle 

There is indeed a force revealed, 
By foes esteemed an idle juggle, 

Which serves its friends as sword and shield. 

Then rend the veil, and read the battle, 

Whoe'er thou art that lackest aught ! 
And light and life, and needful chattel 

By hidden Wisdom shall be brought. 

On every side see wiles Satanic 

Conducting schemes for future bane, — 
For churchman's feud, for merchant's panic, 

For statesman's fall, for all men's pain ! 

And see through all, one wide endeavor 

To break the rule of reck and ruth, 
With stubborn treason prating ever, 

" There's no coherency in truth !" 

Through past and present, the hereafter 

Shall shine on thee, whoe'er thou art, 
Who bravest strife and scorn and laughter, 

To prove the lessons of thy heart. 

* " I am all that was, and is, and shall be ; nor my veil, has it been withdrawn by mortal." 
-Inscription in temple of Isis. 
92 



FUNGUS AS A WORD. 



"The fruit of the Spirit is gentleness." — Gal. v. 22. 

WORDS are things. I do not like the word " bloat." 
As an instrument of language, it seems to me that 
the thing is either worn out, or in need of repair. If so it 
may well be released for a time from active service, in order 
that, like the fallow field of the husbandman, it may renew 
its strength by an undisturbed exposure to the ceaseless oscil- 
lations of upper and of nether elemental influence ; or that, 
like the precious material of his recent manure heap, by the 
resolution of its offensive ingredients, it may as the pure nu- 
triment of truth recover its efficacy as a constituent in the 
living machinery of mind. We tend to extremes in all our 
policy. In language the tendency is shown in the fatality by 
which words originally indifferent in their moral application 
acquire a meaning which is either obviously opprobrious or 
obviously laudatory. The phenomenon of nature which has 
been once used by the original thinker and speaker as a sign 
for the expression of dispassionate thought, is quickly bor- 
rowed by those who are unable or unsolicitous to distinguish 
between its abstract value and its personal application ; the 
sentiment is associated with the surroundings ; and the epi- 
thet or the term, instead of being the channel of useful evi- 
dence or of convincing proof, becomes with them that of idle 
personality or of impotent judgment. 

Some words appear to be more liable than others to this 
exhaustion or corruption of their original value. Metaphors 

93 



94 FUNGUS AS A WORD. 

which may have been derived from the animal kingdom are 
more readily received and literalized in an unduly offensive 
or flattering signification, than those which have been supplied 
by the more obviously unconscious phases and involuntary 
actions of vegetable life, or by the purely mechanical phe- 
nomena of inanimate nature. What we call bloating or pam- 
pering in the animal kingdom, is suggestive of evil agency, 
because it can only occur in the experience or under the 
management of him who is the responsible head of the ani- 
mal kingdom, and in subjects which, exhibiting more or less 
appearance of volition and intelligence, are so far apparently 
responsible for the maintenance of their own infirmities. The 
suggestions, indeed, which must often undesignedly attend 
upon the exhibition of facts, may be useful, like shadows 
upon the ground, as indications to those who cannot lift their 
eyes to the contemplation of substances ; but inasmuch as the 
object of honest speaking is to deal only with facts and allow 
suggestions to take care of themselves, the honest speaker will 
endeavor to use such facts in the illustration of his thought as 
shall compel the hearer to look upward, or to see nothing. 
Being himself guiltless of regarding appearances as anything 
more than ambiguous indications of the course of inward life, 
he will carefully avoid such forms of expression as might lead 
other observers to accept them as definite manifestations of 
the secrets of character. Under the guidance of the catholic 
charity which Is able to "believe all things," he will escape 
both the reality and the permanent appearance of judging of 
spiritual dispositions from physical habits. We may thus, I 
think, w T ell prefer the vegetable word Fungus, to the animal 
word Bloat, in treating of the moral and mental extravagances 
which are so sure to overtake communities who, having long 
reposed in the dense luxuriance of worldly prosperity, have 
insensibly secluded themselves from the unobstructed illumi- 
nation and vigorous ventilation of universal truth. 

Words are not things. Nature is the great storehouse of 
language, as well as of all other worldly wealth. Every mean- 



FUNGUS AS A WORD. 95 

ing which has not the warrant of an analogy derived from the 
universal and mysteriously consistent system of natural truth, 
is a fiction of the individual or associate mind, which, when 
its value is fairly put to the test, will be found as uncurrent in 
the realm of pure knowledge, as is the certificate of an ex- 
ploded bank in a community which trades upon credit, or as 
is the conventional coin in a district wherein gold is more 
abundant than bread. Trust is indeed a glorious and life- 
sustaining reality ; but even in the use of words it has no 
other security than the immutability of truth. As a mere 
species of currency, language is at the best but a- convenient 
abstraction which can and must be adapted at will to every 
diversity and contrariety of circumstances. That language is 
originally void of objective value, is shown by the original 
need of objective illustration and implicit trust in its employ- 
ment. 

The solution of the paradox is a simple one. Nature, as 
the work or expression of God, is infinite. Language, as that 
of man, is finite. Fungus and Bloat, as terms of substantive 
meaning, are, after all, identical if intelligently defined and 
trustfully received. The spiritual realm being recognized as 
the only sphere of consciousness and independent action, the 
animal and vegetable kingdoms of life-manifestation become 
essentially one, their long sought dividing-line being found to 
have, in nature as in mind, no other than a hypothetical ex- 
istence. The two words may doubtless be used indifferently 
to indicate the superficial depravity of development, in which 
quantity usurps the place of quality ; and which, having been 
introduced by sin, may be prolonged, although not perpetu- 
ated, by an innocent ignorance, in a world abounding with 
materials, under the government of Him who " openeth his 
hand and satisfieth the desire of every living thing," " who 
maketh his sun to shine upon the evil and upon the good, and 
sendeth his rain upon the just and upon the unjust." 
9 G 



MIGHT vs. RIGHT. 



" Get what you can, and keep what you get ! 
Who can be always in search of the right ? 
Dream what you will of mercy or debt, 

Who can contend with the kingdom of might ? 

" Welcome such rest as mortals can find ! 

Welcome the clouds, for the sake of such light ! 
Cherish the bonds which righteously bind, 
Satisfied simply that might shall be right !" 

Such the advice their learning affords, 
Who, in such station as falls to their lot, 

Cling to the world, and think to be lords 
In their own right, over that they have got. 

Slaves to a passing system of things, 

Vainly they struggle that all shall be so, 

Craving the comfort company brings, 
Rather than hoping their fate to forego. 

Might is to right as body to soul : 

Why need we utter such simple advice ! 

Charity spreads its living control ; 

Selfishness wastes like the victualler's ice. 

Leaving itself, as known by the flesh, 
Charity looks for its objects abroad, 

Seeking its life by truth to refresh, 

Shunning like death the contagion of fraud. 

Selfishness shrinks from destined decay, 
Nursing the form which the spirit has quit. 

Wisdom descends to lighten our way — 

Wisdom's the great matter, therefore get it ! * 
* Prov. iv. 7. 



96 



CHRISTIAN COMMUNISM. 



" God is in the generation of the righteous." — Ps. xiv. 5. 
" As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in 
us." — John xvii. 21. 

CHRISTIANITY and Fraternity may be said to be syn- 
onymous terms in so far as they alike imply the primary 
relation of Sonship. The true brotherhood which is involv- 
ed in a conscious reliance upon the Universal Father who is 
Himself greater than all his works, inhales a freedom and 
exhales a love which set at defiance every barrier of outward 
inequality. "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" in all the 
essentials of existence, are still the heirloom of " the multi- 
tude of them that believe." Only by the imperfection of be- 
lief are any ever excluded from the felicity of being " of one 
heart and of one soul," and of having " all things common." . 
As belief in the all-convincing Light is ready and persistent, 
realization of the all-sufficing Good will be full and perma- 
nent, however the capacity and sphere of service and enjoy- 
ment may vary in various individuals. u These things have 
I spoken unto you," said the Saviour, " that my joy might 
remain in you, and that your joy might be full." " Ask in 
my name and receive, that your joy may be full." 

The interior conflict between the rule of Divine Grace and 
that of morbid sentiment is outwardly reflected in the appa- 
rent confusion between the just administration of Providence 
and the reckless usurpation of Mammon. As, however, the 
Prince of Peace, who, in his first or historical and yet typical 
coming, declared that every true follower should be his 

97 



98 CHRISTIAN COMMUNISM. 

" mother and brother and sister," shall be so welcomed in his 
second or mystical, and yet individual and most experimental 
coming, as to be indeed " formed in us," we cannot but real- 
ize both internally and externally that the so-called " Over- 
Ruler " is to us through all events, the only actual Ruler. 
As this may become our experience, no Satanic subtilty can 
so corrupt us "from the simplicity that is in Christ," as to 
destroy the blessed assurance, " All things are yours, and ye 
are Christ's, and Christ is God's." Still indeed, while indi- 
viduality shall endure the desire of communion will remain 
as the occasion for the profitable precept, " Let every one of 
us please his neighbor for his good to edification ;" but the 
blunders of sentiment, and the outrages of avaricious lust can 
be effectually combated by no display of words which is not 
derived from the "first and great commandment" of the Divine 
Alan, and from "the second" which "is like unto it." 
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." "Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself." The worship which is manifested 
by perseverance in enlightened self-interest is the road to that 
purity of heart in which all may " see God," and all frag- 
mentary and seemingly conflicting interests be blended and 
consolidated in one. 



POLICY. 



That of "Given an inch and extorted an ell," 
Is a trouble earth's rulers have often to tell. 
In the worth of experience all men agree : 
May experience profit the powers that be ! 

The display of their strength, and the guard of their dues, 
If too often the themes on which potentates muse, 
Must result in the loss of both power and means ; 
For the world travels onward while self-hood o'erweens. 

The regarding of self, in the high or the low, 
Draws the curse of inaction wherever they go — 
The neglect of the work to repose in the way, 
While the multitude presses; for all cannot stay. 

Every man is a monarch who keeps his true place 
As a part of the whole, with discretion and grace. 
By discretion in council, and grace in affairs, 
He will gain while he gives, and preserve for his heirs. 

Every man is a slave who is dead to the ties 
By which all, who observe them, in concert will rise. 
As his giving or getting is out of their course, 
No pretension of zeal shall delay his remorse. 

He who yields in the self-hood not onlv gives worse, 
But his blindness thus leads him himself to disburse : 
Then, with character lessening, must lessen his dues, 
With demands unabated which all men refuse. 

So, to get what they can and to keep what they get, 
Is the crown of their life who make duty their debt : 
But its price and its proof is the will to believe 
That to give is more blessed than e'en to receive. 
9* 99 



BIBLIOLATRY AND PANTHEISM. 



" In philosophy, men have abused the code of natural, as in theology, the 
code of positive revelation; and the epigraph of a great Protestant divine 
on the book of Scripture, is certainly not less applicable to the book of con- 
sciousness : 

" Hie liber est in quo queer it sua dogmata quisque ; 

Invenit, et par iter dogi?iata quisque sua."'' 
" This is the book where each his dogma seeks, 

And this the book where each his dogma finds." 

Sir Wm. Hamilton. 



T 



HE sentiment of a contemporary poet,*— 

"Thought lies deeper than all speech ; 
Feeling, deeper than all thought ;" 



although doubtless liable to obscuration at the hands of hasty 
creed-builders, is sufficiently clear to the unsophisticated ex- 
plorer of actual life. Language, articulate or inarticulate, is 
undoubtedly symbolical and representative in the first place 
of distinct or indistinct ideas, and, in connection with them, 
the vehicle of feeling, at least so far as feeling may be com- 
municated from man to man by natural means. The springs 
of life are evidently hidden deeply beneath the animal senses, 
and still more deeply beneath the facts of external nature with 
which those senses are conversant, and which furnish the 
materials of language. Language, therefore, although in its 
origin a superficial gift or invention, is in its efficient employ- 
ment and development an ever increasing mystery ; and those 
terms which are pre-eminently comprehensive, such as truth, 

* C. P. Cranch. 
100 



BIBLIOLATRY AND PANTHEISM. IOI 

harmony, wisdom, must proportionally surpass other terms 
in their acquired mysteriousness, or power of taking by sur- 
prise the inexperienced thinker. Before proceeding to a con- 
sideration of the connection between Bible-worship and Pan- 
theism, it may be well to contemplate some of the ideal rela- 
tions of the word, Wisdom. 

Human wisdom, being the extent to which men may have 
progressed in the knowledge of truth, is evidently a phrase 
of variable meaning. Wisdom, as an object of attainment, 
is thus distinguished from itself as a subject of aspiration. 
In other words, it is practically divisible into the smaller 
province which is already attained, and therefore now de- 
monstrable, and into the larger province which is yet attain- 
able, and therefore as yet mystical ; and the line of demarka- 
tion must generally, if not always, lie differently in different 
minds, or in the same mind at different times. The neglect 
of this observation is a frequent source of confusion and mis- 
understanding, in the adoption and application of important 
rides of conduct. 

To him who is indeed enough of a Christian to be able to 
say on all occasions, " I am nothing, Christ is all," there is no 
longer anv distinction between the light of nature and the 
light of grace. The u Wisdom" of which King Solomon 
writes in Proverbs (chap, viii.) strikingly corresponds with 
the "Word" of the Evangelist John, and evidently means 
nothing less than the Supernatural Power which is ever con- 
trolling^ present in nature, and which is also nearer to the 
souls which submit- to its internal government than anything 
else can be, or than they are to one another. The Evil Spirit, 
the only evil which may lawfully, rationally, or efficiently be 
resisted, having fled from the manifestation of the Divine 
Power which becomes theirs by faith, all experience becomes 
to them a channel of divine revelation, and in all they are 
alike secure from the danger of mistaking the channel for 
the stream. That which is thus wholly true of the perfect 
Christian, would evidently be proportionally true of imper- 



102 BIBLIOLATRT AND PANTHEISM. 

feet Christians of every degree, if they could be preserved 
from all exclusive or excessive attachment to particular modes 
of revelation. 

So far, however, as any professor of Christianity shall fall 
short of that perfect and immediate dependence upon the 
Divine Fountain which alone can secure an impartial indif- 
ference to the means of grace, his faltering self-denial cannot 
so overcome the prejudices of education, nor his partial en- 
lightenment so ignore the limitations of nature, but that some 
one science, record, or system, will be preponderatingly a rule 
of faith and revelation to him. The abstract and comprehen- 
sive rule of the spiritual cross, although it will prevent his 
resting in anything which is mere attainment to himself, can- 
not at once place him beyond a dependence upon that which 
may be mere attainment to others ; which dependence may 
accordingly to them be indistinguishable from idolatry. Thus 
it happens that the vanguard of civilization in our age is 
largely composed of more or less exclusive votaries of Biblical 
and of Natural Science, who may be typified on the one hand 
by those who term the Scriptures, the Word of God, and on 
the other by those who, because they are at a loss to distin- 
guish between the Creator and the created universe, are called 
Pantheists. Tradition is thus seemingly at variance with in- 
tuition, and history with theory. But as all parties continue 
earnestly the pursuit of intrinsic truth, all may doubtless es- 
cape the dangers of their diverse bigotries, realizing in the life 
of the Resurrection, the omnipresence of Him by whom "all 
things were made," and u in whom all things consist." 



THE LIFE OF GRACE. 



The world's the table of a mixed repast, 
Contrived with wisdom, as with bounty, vast ; 

Where Christian men 
Relax in converse o'er their diverse cares, 
Thence parting to resume their proper shares 

Of work again. 

Refreshment quickens every hand and heart 
Its several toil with zeal renewed to start, 

As Prudence gives 
The tempered taste, true tongue, and willing ear, 
Which carry on the current of good cheer 

By which it lives. 

Thus man depends on Prudence. On itself 
Alone, hangs Prudence. Human wit and pelf, 

As simple tools, 
This effluence of Deity employs 
To their behoof, who heed in all their joys 

Its mystic rules. 

Man's mission is not to avoid the world, 
But the denouncings which on it are hurled, 

In that it dreams 
An independence of its own to nurse, 
And for the better reason puts the worse 

In all its schemes. 

So while we shun not, let us stoop, to eat, 
Without base homage, our appointed meat ; 

Remembering 
That life above the world, in which we strive, 
If we in labor be indeed alive 

And prospering ! 



103 



104 THE LIFE OF GRACE. 

Right thoughtfully, and thankfully, may we 
O'er outward blessings study to agree ; 

And gladly share, 
Without the blinding eagerness of sloth, 
For relaxation and refreshment both, 

Our daily fare ! 

Then shall both strength and taste be e'er renewed 
For public or for private fruits of good ; 

And we the grace 
Attain, to seek but in the Father's will* 
The meat which can the fainting pilgrim fill, 

In every place. 

* " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish his work." — John iv. 34. 



THE KING OF WORDS. 



"The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; for they 
are foolishness unto him : neither can he know them, because they are spirit- 
ually discerned." — I Cor. ii. 14. 

SOCIAL life may be said to be made up of the continual 
alternation of expression and interpretation. Every 
human being is in a limited sphere a sovereign issuing de- 
crees by deed and by word ; and also, with less limitation, 
a subject receiving the decrees of God and his fellow-man, 
and responsible for their just interpretation and faithful exe- 
cution. So far as his execution is indeed faithful, his service 
becomes sovereignty, and his interpretation is merged into an 
enlarged expression. So far as he is faithless, his perform- 
ance must be a suicide of experience, or that capricious living 
in mere pleasure, which is scripturally affirmed to be a living 
death, and whose only positive and abiding result is the tor- 
ment of a vicious interpretation, or the consciousness of per- 
verted powers and lost opportunities. The most wicked life 
may indeed be unintentionally and obviously useful ; but its 
utility is no more attributable to the agent, than the power of 
thought and consciousness can be attributed to a steam-engine. 
He will be negatively dead to the partial good of his action, 
as he is positively dead in the commingling evil. 

Men are naturally materialists. However it may have been 
with the origination of the race, its multiplication is evidently 
a material phenomenon. At the outset of individual life, 
matter is the basis of experience with all, and must so con- 
tinue until the more or less complete subjugation of death, 

105 



106 THE KING OF WORDS. 

hell and the grave, and the accompanying miraculous acces- 
sion of the dividual and regenerate life of the spirit. No one, 
therefore, by whom that happy transformation is unattained, 
is at any time capable of fully interpreting either himself or 
his circumstances. Hence the wondering query with which 
those words and works of men which most truly reflect the 
universal simplicity of objective nature, are at first almost 
universally greeted, " What do they mean?" But the quality 
of truthful simplicity by which alone they are capable of com- 
pelling attention, being not only unfathomable but inconceiv- 
able to a sensual discernment, the superficial querist learns to 
regard rather the disposition of the doer or speaker than the 
matter of his expression, as a more familiar, though not truly 
more fathomable, subject of interpretation, and the term 
u meaning " loses much or all of its force in contributing to 
that of the term " Motive." The servility of the sensual 
nature thus conspires with the dignity of the spiritual, to 
assign a commanding value to this mysterious but indispens- 
able word. The eccentricities of temperament and of train- 
ing fail to offend when a conciliating Motive is supposed to 
be involved in the instantaneous and deep-seated action of the 
will. 

The word Motive is not only thus of larger social signifi- 
cance than the words Meaning and Method, but it is in an 
even greater degree paramount to another, the word Object, 
with which it is nevertheless still more liable to be confounded. 
In his unregenerate incompetency to appreciate the abstract 
foundations of thought, man is prone to overlook both the 
motive proper or affectional germ of his proceeding, and its 
intelligence or method, in the concrete aim or so-called object 
of action ; thus giving all the force of the term Motive to the 
thing which is determined rather than to the determining 
principle, and miserably ignoring all law except the pretend- 
ed rule of fate or chance. Whoever says " motive" when he 
means " object," countenances the delusion. The impulse, 
the method and the object, may indeed be said to form a 



THE KING OF WORDS. 107 

practically inseparable trinity of integral activity ; but in so 
far as theory governs practice, the members of every trinity 
must be at least distinguished theoretically. The disposing 
motive of the soul, which is the primary development of voli- 
tion, must evidently be the leading or immediately causative 
principle of human activity, and as such alone strictly entitled 
to the name of Motive. Being theoretically distinguishable 
from the action of the will, it is theoretically but a viceroy of 
conduct: but as the ever-acting viceroy, practically indistin- 
guishable from the determining royalty, it becomes the ulti- 
mate criterion in the estimate both of thought and of .conduct, 
and therefore practically the King of the turbulent province 
of Language. 
10 



MOTIVES. 



" I dwell in the valley of Conscience, like all men, 
Invested on both sides by towering mountains. 
Self- Knowledge, my dwelling I also may call, when 
I reach under ground the mysterious fountains. 

"Mount Strength, or Mount Virtue, ascends on the right hand; 
Its fellow is named, either Action, or Station : — 
This, lost to the view in clouds darker than night, and 
That, shining in all the fair hues of creation. 

" Contentment and service are paramount duties : 

Where both are maintained there can be no transgression : 
Lo ! here I continue, in sight of yon beauties, 

With cheerfulness ploughing my petty possession. 

" Can more be commanded ?'' — Yes, sluggard in spirit ! 
Hast thou all forgotten the under-ground fountains ? 
Thy shuffling devotion can never inherit 

The riches that robe the Delectable Mountains. 

The flowers and fruits thus attracting thy vision 
Away from the grandeurs of primal existence, 

Like them must indeed set at naught thy ambition, 
Except thou unite with the proffered assistance. 

The under-ground fountains connect with the mountains : 
Sink deep through the covering soil of thy nature ! 

Each stratum of duty holds one of those fountains, 
Whose mystical motion shall warrant thy way sure. 

Though every rude element rises to frustrate, 

The prover of miracles never shall cower : 
The deeper the doctrine thy life shall illustrate, 

The higher thy virtue shall publish its power. 

108 



RIVAL CLUES. 



"They, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves 
among themselves, are not wise." — 2 Cor. x. 12. 

AMID all the disputes and debates of purblind humanity, 
there is one fact which may be always assumed as in- 
disputable. While theoretical truth is ever almost as incom- 
prehensible as it is immutable, practical truth, or demonstra- 
ble experience, is as mutable as it is real. It is at least obvi- 
ously verified at last in the experience of all, that nothing is 
settled or stationary in the fashion of the world which " pass- 
eth away," The phrase u established order" in its applica- 
tion to human institutions, is evidently at the best but a pious 
fiction or necessary artifice of language. In conversation we 
can only deal with spiritual power or causation, as spiritual 
life is manifested in material phenomena and changes ; and 
all mutual intelligence respecting any truly established order 
of experience, must accordingly imply a spiritual communion 
maintained independently of the works and words in which 
it is embodied, and which are themselves the life of the su- 
perficial liver. Force and form, though in themselves insep- 
arable, are contrasting, and too often conflicting elements of 
human experience. Force is as fundamental and permanent, 
as it is essentially indemonstrable. Form is as superficial and 
transient, as it is essentially manifest. Force is meaning: 
form is expression. 

Human character is the combined result of selection and 
experience. At the option of the agent, it either floats and 

109 



HO RIVAL CLUES. 

drifts recklessly with form, or it dives and swims intelligently 
with force. In its conversational aspect, however, even cha- 
racter is necessarily and wholly formal and mutable, and as 
such, is always, like other recognized phenomena, a proper 
subject of constant inquiry with those whose powers of ab- 
straction may not qualify them for viewing it in its essence, 
and so for laboring, here as elsewhere, to extend rather than 
to define the boundaries of the demonstrable. The explorer 
of truth must therefore ever be prepared to encounter the in- 
quiry, Who is greatest? since there are always those who are 
thus compelled to base their arguments on the authority of 
character. Although the comparison of attainments thus in- 
stituted must ultimately yield to him the tribute of increasing 
reputation, the disappointment at the loss of companionship 
on such occasions is poorly compensated by the consequence 
of becoming himself an authority, and would be a constant 
source of unhappiness to him, were not the w r hole creation 
an inexhaustible reservoir of divine refreshment, to which the 
lover of truth may ever resort for communion with truly kin- 
dred souls, in the power and presence of the all-sufficing Pro- 
vider. The alienation where unintentional may be regarded 
as unavoidable. Although a seeming or formal loss, it must 
then be an actual or potential gain to all parties, since even 
the servile imitator may thereby learn that the inquiry, What 
is true? comprehends his own, and every subordinate clue 
of investigation, and is not comprehended by them. Practi- 
cal incongeniality being, in this world of work, the very voice 
of fate, becomes thus the rule of rank ; and as the majesty of 
truth is imparted to the independent servants of truth, the 
partisans of every rival clue are led to recognize in their own 
shortcomings the delusions of all worldly or finite attainment, 
and are constrained increasingly to respect, if not to realize, 
the all-embracing claims of religion — the " great mystery of 
godliness." 



COMPARISON. 



To compare is to show we suspect : 

To suspect is to publish our blindness : 

To be blind, where we ought to detect, 
Is brute-dullness or willful unkindness. 

For the Spirit of Unity gives 

In true kindness our social foundation, 

As each tenant compatibly lives 

With the plan of our joint habitation.* 

As experience ever reveals 

His own powers and objects in others, 

He who knows his own tenement, feels 
Its accordance, so far, with his brother's. 

Thus the method is open to all 

To employ that direct intuition, 
By whose guidance man never can fall 

Into dangerous trust or suspicion. 

But the concert of spirit with form 
Is a riddle which mocks the unwary, 

So that prejudice takes them by storm 
When the forms of propriety vary. 

For the Spirit is that which gives life, 
While the form is a fugitive seeming, 

As is proved in that war to the knife 

Which distinguishes seeing from dreaming. 

And the mushroom assurance of those 
By whom shells are devoured as kernels, 

Through their love of comparison grows 
From the compost of cast-off externals. 

'Ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." — Eph. i 
10* H 11! 



FAITH AS A GIFT. 



"It is not reason that we should leave the Word of God, and serve 
tables." — Acts vi. 2. 

" If we were forced to form conceptions about a Son of God, or Son of 
Man, there would be a perpetual strife of intellects ; there could be no con- 
sent ; each man must think differently from his neighbor, — must try to estab- 
lish his own thoughts against his neighbor's. If He is revealed to us as the 
ground of our intellects, — the Creative Word of God from whom they derive 
their light, — as the Centre of our fellowship, the only-begotten Son of God 
in whom we are made the sons of God ; the weary effort is over : our 
thoughts may travel to the ends of the earth, but here is their home : apart 
from Him men have infinite disagreements ; in Him they have peace." 

F. D. Maurice. 

T may be regarded as a testimony against the assumption 
of a false independence, or a rash reliance upon any . 
apparent originality of the individual human understanding, 
that we are scripturally taught that u faith comes by hearing." 
It may equally be regarded as a testimony against a false de- 
pendence upon the understandings of our fellow-men, that it is 
added, " and hearing by the Word of God." As there is such 
a thing as holding the truth in unrighteousness,* it is evident 
that the words of God may become the words of designing 
men, who would abuse the confidence of their fellows bv 
applying them to occasions which do violence to their spirit- 
ual meaning. Words are many, because notions or ideas are 
many, as the constituent elements and circumstances of life 
in which they both originate are many. The Word of Truth 
is one, and is the Begetter of just notions, and may be said to 

* Rom, i, 18. 
112 



FAITH AS A GIFT, 1 13 

be also the Namer of them, according to the circumstances 
of their birth. Its creations may thus become the objects of 
memory, and the means of imposture ; but it alone is the ob- 
ject of true faith, and the unchanging and ever new meaning 
of all expressions, old or new, which are uttered in the 
Divine authority, light and guidance, which can alone ensure 
a just appreciation of the circumstances. It is important to 
bear carefully in mind this necessarily vague distinction of 
spiritual from merely intellectual truth, however paradoxical 
or however obvious it may be to different classes of thinkers, 
in order to avoid the natural tendency, both to deceive our- 
selves by exaggerating the stability of our notions, and to im- 
pose upon others by assuming their universality. 

The perspicuous, though elaborate, " Apology " of Robert 
Barclay, is a rich reservoir of suggestion upon the objects, 
and consequently upon the natures, of the true and the false 
faith. There appears to be a danger in our day, that men 
shall deny the possibility of a false faith. Let such, if such 
there be, consider that it cannot be more absurd to speak of a 
false faith, than of a false god, or of a false church, as a thing 
to which all are in danger of becoming victims if they do not 
diligently guard their own hearts ! 

The " Apology " is remarkable as being perhaps the first 
doctrinal treatise of permanent value in the world, which en- 
dorses the originally scholastic, but now inevitable, distinc- 
tion between the subjective and objective aspects of experi- 
ence. The ordinary use of these terms in the science of 
Grammar, sufficiently defines them. ''Subjective" means 
of the originator or of the agent ; " Objective," of the end, 
or of the material used. All practice implies the combina- 
tion of the two aspects; and faith, as the essential principle 
of intelligent practice, may be said to imply the concentration 
of each. There must be pre-eminently a combination of the 
subjective and the objective aspects of experience, in the deep, 
but fundamental phenomenon of pure faith. 

Previously to the formal discrimination of these opposite, 



114 FAITH AS A GIFT. 

though consistent aspects of faith, it is obvious that the think- 
er who was regarding it from one point of view, would be 
apt to speak of the opposite aspect as a mere quality of faith, 
rather than the thing 1 itself. While we read of faith as being 
in itself " a substance," we also read, on the one hand, of the 
" obedience of faith," which is evidently its essential condi- 
tion ; and on the other, of the " assurance of faith," which is 
its most apparent result and indication, and which according- 
ly in a superficial view T may be mistaken for the substance. 
In this comparatively superficial and secondary sense, it is 
undeniable that faith is a gift ; and a gift of such importance 
as to account for its being scripturally enumerated as such 
among the other graces of the Spirit. But that it is not to be 
recognized as a part of the free and universal grace which 
has been so dearly purchased for us in advance of our own 
co-operation, is plainly intimated by a precise interpretation 
of Eph. ii. 8 ("it is the gift of God"), and by Heb. iv. 2 
( u the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed 
with faith in them that heard it"). The slightest acquaint- 
ance with the Greek language suffices to show that in the 
former of these texts, it is the salvation, and not the faith, 
which is called " the gift." In an argumentative exhorta- 
tion, does not this prompt reiteration of the view of the divine 
mercy imply that, by the mention of faith, the apostle was 
conscious of having interposed the view of something which 
must be " of ourselves?" In the latter text, faith is evidently 
referred to exclusively in the aspect of obedience or submis- 
sion. 

Some extracts from the concluding section of Barclay's 
defence of the second Proposition of his " Apology," upon 
the subject of Revelation, may perhaps here serve to illustrate 
" the form of sound words" which, as discovered, we are en- 
joined to maintain through all the advances of faith. 

" To make an end, I shall add one argument to prove, that 
this inward, immediate, objective revelation, which we have 
pleaded for all along, is the only sure, certain and unmov- 



FAITH AS A GIFT. 115 

able foundation of all Christian faith ; which argument, when 
well weighed, I hope will have weight with all sorts of 
Christians ; and it is this : 

" That which all professors of Christianity, of what kind 
soever, are forced ultimately to recur unto when pressed to 
the last; and that for and because of which all other founda- 
tions are recommended, and accounted worthy to be believed, 
and without which they are granted to be of no weight at all, 
must needs be the only most true, certain, and immovable 
foundation of all Christian faith. 

" But inward, immediate objective revelation by the Spirit, 
is that which all professors of Christianity are forced ulti- 
mately to recur unto, etc. 

" First, as to the Papists, they place their foundation in 
the judgment of the Church and tradition. If we press them 
to say, Why they believe as the Church doth ? their answer 
is, Because the Church is always led by the infallible Spirit. 
So here the leading of the Spirit is the utmost foundation. 
Again, if we ask them, Why we ought to trust tradition? 
they answer, Because these traditions were delivered unto 
us by the doctors and fathers of the Church; which doctors 
and fathers, by the revelation of the Holy Ghost, com- 
manded the Church to observe them. Here again all ends 
in the revelation of the Spirit. 

" As for the Protestants and Socinians, both which ac- 
knowledge the Scriptures to be the foundation and rule of 
their faith ; the one as subjectively influenced by the Spirit 
of God to use them, the other as managing them with and by 
their own reason ; ask both, or either of them, Why they trust 
in the Scriptures, and take them to be their rule? their an- 
swer is, Because xve have in them the m in d of God delivered 
unto us by those to zvhom these things were inwardly, i?n- 
mediately, and objectively revealed by the Spirit of God; 
and not because this or that man wrote them, but because the 
Spirit of God dictated them. 

u Therefore, this inward, immediate, objective revelation by 



n6 FAITH AS A GIFT. 

the Spirit, is the only sure, certain, and unmovable founda- 
tion of all Christian faith. 

"It is strange that men should render \i. e., account and 
report] that so uncertain and dangerous to follow, upon which 
alone the certain ground and foundation of their own faith is 
built ; or that they should shut themselves out from that holy 
fellowship with God, which is only enjoyed in the Spirit, in 
which we are commanded both to walk and to live, 

"Wait then for this in the small revelation of that pure 
light which first reveals things more known ; and as thou 
becomest fitted for it, thou shalt receive more and more, and 
by a living experience easily refute their ignorance who ask, 
How dost thou know that thou art actuated by the Spirit of 
God? Which will appear to thee a question no less ridicu- 
lous than to ask one whose eyes are open, How he knows the 
sun shines at noonday ? And though this be the surest and 
certainest way to answer all objections ; yet by what is above 
written it may appear, that the mouths of all such opposers 
as deny this doctrine may be shut, by unquestionable and 
unanswerable reasons." 



FORM. 



Make not too light of form ! All faith 

Implies a system. First* 

'Tis true, the germ must burst 
Its shell ; but as it grows it saith ; 

" A grain of living seed am I : 
I drop my rigid shell 
Which served my need so well* 
And to my old existence die* 

" And still I live. I do not scorn 

That shape, once so secure ; 
But still its marks endure, 
While my free strength is Upward borne, 

" I know not how I live and grow, 
Except that with my eye 
I love the light, and die 
To naught through which my life Can flow. 

" New forms come o'er me : their design 
I act, but may not search. 
And yet in nature's church 
Some humble consequence is mine. 

" They come and go : but through them all 
I am myself, and still 
Reflect that Sovereign Will 
To which the universe is thrall." 

So let thy life its worship show ! 

Do homage to his might ; 

Eye lovingly his light ; 
Nor scorn through fleeting forms to grow ! 

117 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 



" Keep thy heart with all diligence ; for out of it are the issues of life." — 
Prov. iv. 23. 

BY the law of Comparison which must govern our estimate 
of all external things so far as they may be theoreticallv, 
either willingly or unwillingly, abstracted from their internal 
relations, the demonstrable objects of knowledge are divided 
into things general and things particular. Only by this law 
is there any force in the contrasted terms Whole and Part, or 
Summary and Detail ; and since comparison itself is a pro- 
cess rather than a fact, even the distinction thus imparted 
becomes as fugitive in its realization, as it was faulty in its 
foundation. The process itself therefore becomes more worthy 
of our attention, than the objects of it; and this we at once 
find to be appreciable in two aspects, according to the direc- 
tion in which the intelligent subject may be said to move in 
its performance. So far as his course of investigation may 
be one of mere dissipation, his knowledge of generals will 
be lost in that of particulars, and he may be less justly said ac- 
tively to analyze, than passively to decompose. So far as his 
course may be one of labor and aspiration, his analysis will 
be but the prelude to a synthesis of re-composition, or new 
composition, and he will thus ascend from the knowledge of 
particulars to that of generals. 

Whatever we may think of the cause, the fact is a glaring 

one, that it is only through analysis that we rise to synthesis. 

Every man naturally tends to rely upon some partial phase 

of truth which is his ideal of Deity, if not the " god of his 

118 



THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 119 

idolatry," so long as his nature remains undeveloped into the 
perfect catholicity of pure love. Appetite ; intellect ; the 
moral wealth or credit which consists in the possession of 
reputation ; the more glaringly material blessings which are 
in like manner represented by money ; even a genuine human 
fellowship so far as it can be maintained out of a conscious 
subordination to the Divine Power and impersonal principles 
of truth, are all to be classed among external things, and are 
mere surfaces and semblances of substantial good. They are 
alike dangerous abstractions, although temporarily necessary 
to stay the longings of our fragmentary nature for the one 
undeceitful and eternal concrete. At best they are but finite 
and fugitive forms of the One Infinite and Immutable Force. 
It is necessary for us to recognize them as practical powers ; 
but it is possible to elevate them from the service of guides to 
the station of idols, and to sacrifice to them our hope of per- 
fect good, instead of devoting them continually upon the altar 
of truth, as the price and proof of progress in the knowledge 
of God. 

By the intellect, or mind, the truth is known in its details. 
Only by faith and hope can it be approached in its integrity, 
and only by love can it be finally and perfectly realized. The 
intellect is the storehouse of knowledge, but the heart is iis 
living source, because it is the seat of spiritual belief. The 
trust in intellect may therefore be called a false faith, as open- 
ing a door for the delusions of self and Satan. " In vain the 
net is spread in the sight of any bird." It is only as we prac- 
tically ignore the dependence of head-work upon heart-work, 
that the Power of evil can profit by our limitations, and make 
us pervert to our loss the lessons of experience by which we 
might otherwise " go on to perfection." 

The head may be termed the seat of form, as the heart is 
that of force. Accordingly, since knowledge is the command 
of mere forms, while realization includes also that of forces, 
the knowledge of good and evil may evidently be the occa- 
sion, although it cannot be the cause, of disobedience to the 
11 



. I20 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

law written or spoken in the heart. The cause must evidently 
be a want of faith in the unseen, and a consequent dependence 
upon the deceitful forms of knowledge. Forsaking the true 
inspiration, man is at the mercy of a false inspiration which 
can act upon him only by an appeal to some sort of precedent. 
Rejecting the privilege of co-operating with an ever present 
and almighty Creator, he then shuts himself in the tomb of 
past experiences. His work of synthesis may be but begun, 
when he shall forsake it in a voluntary blindness, and descend 
into that of a fruitless analysis. Let him beware of so real- 
izing the decomposition of corruption ! 

Blessed indeed and for ever be the Eternal Father of Spirits 
for the advent of the Second Adam, who through all dangers 
and temptations, is " mighty to save and able to deliver all 
them that come unto God by Him !" 



IMMORTALITY. 



Some dreaming souls there are in this dim world, 
Who care not to discern the Why and How 

That Will appears, whose power of old unfurled, 
And still expands, the streaming I and Now. 

To them creation is a lie ; and fate 

The mirror of their life, which represents 

Confusion and distress as the estate, 
And final grave, of all the elements. 

Too torpid they the urgent signs to heed 
Of that primeval One, whose skill supreme 

Called forth from naught, or from Himself decreed, 
The scenes which decorate their willful dream. 

Alike unknown to them the supplement 
To that prime miracle ; — how life prevails 

O'er death, by healing grace, with force not spent, 
But fed, in graver or more trifling ails. 

Thus never come, but always going, life 
To them, it seems, suggests no mystery. 

The I and Now with them are so at strife, 
The Why and How they cannot wish to see. 

So may we know the central Source of light, 
So may its flood our finite measures fill, 

That the creative and redemptive Might 
May prove in every pass our treasure still ! 

Then fate to us can offer no dismay : 

The star that brightly sets is never gone ; 

But through the spheral sky of faith, with ray 
Unfaltering moves, and shines for ever on. 



121 



SINCERITY AND SENSIBILITY. 



" The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him." — Ps. xxv. 14. 

" If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine." — John vii. 17. 

ALTHOUGH there is no identity, there is certainly no 
incompatibility, between wisdom and knowledge. 
Their difference is indeed obvious to the reflecting observer, 
but it may perhaps here be appropriately remarked that wis- 
dom is a state of the soul, while knowledge is a process of 
intercourse between the soul and outward things. Their re- 
lation to each other is the same as that which exists between 
physical health and physical performance. Accordingly, as 
knowledge, by the testimony of universal experience, is prac- 
tically equivalent to physical power of every kind, wisdom is 
obviously, as the voice of inspiration anciently declared, u the 
principal thing," or that which is worthy to be pursued and 
cherished as the only permanent channel of every inferior 
blessing. Remembering that the relation of the internal to 
the external is that of cause to effect, we may describe the 
order of human experience by saying that performance is the 
surface of health, health the surface of knowledge, and knowl- 
edge the surface of sensibility or active wisdom. Cannot the 
state of wisdom be also viewed as a still more recondite pro- 
cess of some deeper and simpler element of being? Let us 
examine whether it be not itself a comparatively outward 
manifestation of secret sincerity of soul, and whether the con- 
venient distinction between states and processes be not ever a 
merely relative one, whose line of division recedes before the 
penetration of the inquirer, as does that between the internal 
122 



SINCERITY AND SENSIBILITY. 1 23 

and the external in every field of research. The investigation 
may seem to deal in insignificant refinements ; but let us ever 
remember that in what may be called intellectual optics, as 
in the physical science, the same principles, which, when 
applied in one direction, may bring into view the most distant 
recesses of the field of vision, in the other may reveal the har- 
monious order by which the infinitely small co-operates with 
the infinitely vast. Let us explicitly inquire whether the wis- 
dom which is passive as compared with practical knowledge, 
may not be regarded as active from a more internal point of 
view ; and, if so, by what terms we shall designate the rela- 
tively passive and active, or internal and external results of 
our more advanced analysis. 

As neither power nor consciousness, although to an evident 
extent under our own control, can be said to originate in our 
own volition, every human being may be said to be practically 
a compound of materials and susceptibilities. The secondary 
phenomena of power and consciousness being determined by 
the greater or less harmony of the human will with the Di- 
vine Will, even the human will, being thus at best but a 
power of choice between the solicitations of more potent in- 
fluences, must practically rank with mere susceptibilities or 
capacities. As the link, however, between the agent and the 
impersonal power of his action, it is evidently the bond of 
unity to his whole life, so far as he may lead a consistent life. 
If, then, by this power of choice he shall devote himself to 
the service of the Omnipresent Spirit of Good, its inwardly 
and outwardly uniting influence must preserve him from the 
dividing influence of the adverse Spirit of Evil ; and his life 
will exhibit the impress of sincerity to those who, by a like 
acquaintance with the source of sincerity, are qualified to ap- 
preciate its harmonious manifestations. Sincerity being thus, 
whether recognized or not, the pervading trait, not only of his 
manifest actions, but of all the peculiarities of character by 
which he may be distinguished from other agents, and which 
only mav strictly be called his individual traits, becomes evi- 
11* 



124 SINCERITY AND SENSIBILITY. 

dentlv with all such the individual channel or measure of 
power, and the basis of true, manly consciousness. 

Power being thus inseparable from consciousness in spiritual 
experience, the two must increase or decrease together. As 
sincerity is another name for individual power, so is sensibil- 
ity for individual consciousness. The sphere of perception 
must clearly rise with that of action, as the course of attain- 
ment successively reduces the objects of our short-sighted, al- 
though spiritual, aspirations, to the rank of animal qualifica- 
tions, so that the capacity of appreciation will ever continue 
to be a measure of the capacity of performance. In other 
words sensibility will ever keep pace with sincerity, and be 
the active component of wisdom, so far as it may be neces- 
sary to distinguish wisdom from knowledge, and the con- 
scious royal and priestly man, from the superficial and servile 
human machine. We recognize morality as a living power, 
or the true handmaid of religion, when we proclaim, in the 
language of a venerable teacher,* that sincerity is its u touch- 
stone." 

* Daniel B. Smith, of Philadelphia. 



SCEPTRES. 



What sceptre will the model monarch wield, 
At which the demon Anarchy shall yield 
His horrid waste, and perish on the field ? 

The sword affrights : but how, if fear be lord 

Shall Anarchy not often be restored 

As blind Contention shall her aid afford ? 

Gold weighs and shines : right strong 'twould seem is GOLD. 
But how shall stand a thousand, so controlled, 
Before one will which never has been sold ? 

Friendship may smile ; and love is surely strong, 
Where smiles but love, the fiend could live not long, 
But love avowed, means license, to the throng. 

To sway the throng the sceptre must be twined. 
Three rigid cords in one must be combined, 
Ere stands the rule which shall not be resigned. 

Take purity, which shuns diverting cares ; 
Patience, to which contempt its secret bares ; 
And vigilance, which no occasion spares. 

Where love shall move embodied in these three ; 
Hiding and hidden, where they all agree ; 
There shall be waved the wand of Majesty. 

125 



AFFECTATION AND EMULATION. 



" Men are but children of a larger growth." — Old Proverb. 

APPEARANCES are manifold and mysterious : realities 
are few and simple. Substantial good and essential 
evil, therefore, however readily distinguished by those whose 
faculties, in the words of the Apostle, are " exercised by rea- 
son of use," are sadly confounded by those who have not 
learned to look beneath appearances. None but those who 
understand the divine command to "judge not according to 
the appearance," need attempt to obey the subsequent apos- 
tolic precept, " abstain from all appearance of evil," since it 
is evident, on the one hand, that they alone can know what 
a true appearance of evil is; and on the other, that any, in 
shunning a false appearance of it, must be shunning a real 
good. 

Let it be remembered then, that appearances are to be 
studied, and cultivated or suppressed, only so for as they are 
incidental to realities, and not as they may depend on the 
fallible notions of our fellow-men, which they alone, of mor- 
tals, can rectify. Thus we may hope to avoid the vice of 
affectation, and to grow in consistency by the practice of a 
true independence. 

As affectation is the frequent foible of advanced years, so 
emulation is the besetting danger of the season of youth ; for 
it also may be said to have its source in an undue regard for 
mere appearances. Both evils may exist in varying degrees, 
although either of course becomes generally conspicuous only 
when unusually intense. They differ in the circumstance that 
126 



A FFE C TA TION A ND EMU LA TION. I 2 7 

while affectation becomes conspicuous only through extra- 
ordinary ignorance of the subject which is the occasion of it, 
emulation is most obvious when it is joined with extraordinary 
knowledge. When not thus joined, emulation often appears 
as a desire rather to equal those who may be in advance 
of us, than to surpass those who are in the same stage of 
progress, and thus becomes more indistinguishable from a 
laudable love of approbation. In both cases, however, the 
stimulus of mere emulation is distinguishable, to a disinter- 
ested observer, from that of the pure love of truth and good 
report, by the different effects of success and failure upon the 
different aspirants. Where emulation is the motive, success 
will be followed by a temporary relaxation of zeal, the appa- 
rent earnestness of the worker giving place to a real levity 
of manner, because the motive itself fails, and no stream can 
flow faster or higher than its source. To the sincere lover of 
truth, on the other hand, present success is valuable chiefly 
as an opening for future progress in truth, and accordingly 
stimulates him at once, though perhaps unconsciously, to re- 
newed exertion. For the same reasons the occasional failure 
which in the one case brings manifest pain and mortification, 
is encountered in the other without disappointment, and may 
even afford apparent encouragement through the new sugges- 
tions which it is always able to supply. 

The intelligent Christian needs but little argument to re- 
mind him, that an escape from both affectation and emulation 
is to be found only in the earnestness of purpose, which the 
religion of the Cross only can supply to those in whose ex- 
perience there is any remaining antagonism between realities 
and appearances. In individual as in social life, it alone is 
the reconciling agency, through which the only Saviour of 
men " slays the enmity" of the discordant elements, " making 
in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace." 



BUCKRAM. 



The good and ill combine in every breast, 

Like sheep and goats within the seeming church, 

Or wheat and tares, confused and unconfessed 
Until the harvest-binders' rigid search. 

But not the less may every human heart 

Which owns the Light that shines upon its sores, 

And courts the heavenly breeze, and bears the smart 
By which its inward balm to health restores, — 

Not less shall he who makes that Light his home, 
Each end from its beginning learn to see. 

The day of judgment, thus already come, 
To its disclosures summons thee and me. 

The mongrel traits in thy heart and in mine, 
Strange offspring of contending good and ill, 

As thus discerned shall show their clear design, 
Nor fickle nature veil the constant will. 

The charity which grafts the soul in God, 
And from such union all its increase knows, 

Shall stand unmoved when earth and heaven shall nod,- 
The earth and heaven of willful works and shows. 

The earnestness which breeds self-sacrifice, 

Of charity must largely be inspired, 
Though oft appearing zealous more than wise, 

And safely gain the glorious goal desired. 

But he who takes the stiffness for the strength, 

And imitates thereby the earnest man, 
Shall lean upon a broken reed at length. 

Let thee and me our own foundation scan ! 



128 



ASSURANCE, SENTIMENTAL AND PRAC- 
TICAL. 



" He that doeth these things shall never be moved." — Ps. xv. 5. 
" That ye may have somewhat to answer them which glory in appearance, 
and not in heart." — 2 Cor. v. 12. 

IT is so evidently disgraceful for man, as a being created 
in the image of God, to be living in a state of mental 
suspense, or in any sort of dependence on mere circumstances, 
that it is not to be wondered at, that the mere reputation of 
holy assurance, or settlement of soul and fixity of purpose, 
should often be a coveted prize with those who are ignorant 
of the reality. The true rule for distinguishing between a 
pretended assurance and a real one, thus becomes a matter 
of importance to the sincere inquirer and earnest worker, so 
far as he may be required in any way to respond to the pre- 
tensions or professions of his fellow-men. 

Here as elsewhere general doctrine can be approached only 
by the way of particular experience, and enforced by an ap- 
peal to the same. There is a modest egotism and a cautious 
dogmatism which are less open to the insinuation of error 
than officious self-depreciation or ambitious argumentation ; 
and the most enthusiastic propagandism cannot substitute in- 
dividual heart-work, nor communicate the vision in which 
alone heart is said to answer to heart, " as face to face" in 
outward reflection. (Prov. xxvii. 19.) "We preach, " wrote 
the great apostle of doctrine, " not ourselves, but Christ 
Jesus the Lord ; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake" 
(2 Cor. iv. 5) : and again, ranking himself among the learners, 

129 



130 ASSURANCE, SENTIMENTAL AND PRACTICAL. 

u Whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same 
rule, let us mind the same thing." (Phil. iii. 16.) 

Of the faith which may be had " to ourselves before God" 
as the same teacher elsewhere enjoins (Rom. xiv. 22), w 7 e of 
course cannot directly demonstrate the grounds, one to an- 
other. It is of those relations to man, which though similar 
to our relations to God, are subordinate thereto, or are involved 
in them, and so rather imply than involve those superior ties, 
it is of these alone that we can hope clearly to demonstrate 
the nature and operation to each other. The assurance that 
he has discharged his duty toward men, and is therefore free 
from any particular obligation to others resulting from pre- 
vious trespass or neglect on his own part, is therefore the 
highest practical prerogative which may be claimed for the 
Christian freeman, or that by which he pre-eminently main- 
tains his position and influence in the world of society. 

This practical or social assurance may be said to consist in 
the habitual consciousness of self-sacrifice or devotion. De- 
votion to man is a more distinct object of consciousness than 
devotion to God, simply because we are more continually 
reminded of our past services to one another by the almost 
necessary imperfectness of their appreciation. The humble 
Christian is reminded of his past service to God, only by its 
abundant remuneration ; and his appreciation of, or thank- 
fulness for this, is often too far from being continual, so that 
his assurance God-ward may be less conscious, if not less real, 
than his assurance man-ward. As is set forth in the parable 
of the Unjust Steward, " the children of this world" may 
upon this point be more discerning respecting " the children 
of light," than they themselves are, " in their generation." 
The same weakness of an immature faith is clearly intimated 
in the oft-quoted interrogatory, " If a man love not his brother 
whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not 
seen?"* and may well account for the greater attainability and 
more frequent appearance of the lower order of assurance, 

1 John iv. 20. 



ASSURANCE, SENTIMENTAL AND PRACTICAL. 131 

among those who are as yet only on the way to the state of 
the spiritual man, who " judgeth all things." 

We may inter then that the strongest assignable evidence 
of that higher assurance God-ward is to be found in this lower 
assurance man-ward, which, with its naturally attendant graces 
of accessibility, geniality and frankness, is at once essential 
and sufficient for the preservation of merely social position. 
It may be regarded, to borrow a scriptural simile, as the 
candle-stick of the Gospel candle, whether the flame of in- 
dividual aspiration may as yet be confined to the form of con- 
fession and prayer, or whether it may have expanded into 
that of praise and boasting in God alone. Where this prin- 
ciple is justly appreciated, there can be little or no danger of 
a mere general doctrinal profession being allowed to super- 
sede that specific personal confession, which " is made unto 
salvation" as the fruit of repentance and the pledge of amend- 
ment. 
12 



TONE. 



The crown of virtue is endurance ;— 
That time, and time's o'erturnings, 

May not subdue her mild assurance, 
Or dissipate her earnings. 

Her gathered strength, and current favor 
Rare tact, and common chattel, 

Maintain the ranks which shall not waver 
Through life's unceasing battle. 

u But by what magic, or what training, 
Rules she her matchless legions, 
Herself and them so well sustaining 
Through dark and hostile regions ?" 

Lo ! virtue is the Sun of heaven, 
Which lays each night-born terror, 

And quickens with transforming leaven 
The very mists of error ! 

' Yes ! such is virtue in her pureness. 

But how can mortal reach her, 
Whose thinking sullies all their sureness, 
Or other erring teacher ?" 

Inconstant heart ! forsake thy doubting ! 

The sun thou knowest by vision, 
Doth not salute thy ear with shouting 

To deepen thy decision. 

Lift watchfully to virtue's shinings 

The worship of thy spirit, 
And thou shalt yet with her refinings 

Her energies inherit ! 



132 



RULES OF RATIONAL CONVERSATION. 



" To him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of 
God."— Ps. 1. 23. 

" By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be con- 
demned." — Matt. xii. 37. 

I. Universal, or Absolute. 

A. Let there be but one subject whose nature and connec- 
tions are to be examined and discussed at one time. 

II. Conditional, or Relative. 

B. Let the subject thus immediately under consideration 
be always, if possible, a thing, act or principle, and not a 
person or character. 

C. Where any one, from incapacity or heedlessness, finds 
it more easy to judge an agent as evil or as good, than to de- 
fine the evil or the good of his action or language, and pro- 
ceeds to the expression of such judgment, let him promptly 
and modestly, if invited, confess the motive of zeal or benev- 
olence which actuated him : but, if he shall find upon reflec- 
tion that he could honestly and charitably have judged the 
performance rather than the performer, or wholly have sup- 
pressed his judgment, let him not attempt any such justifica- 
tion ; but on the contrary, if permitted, acknowledge and con- 
demn the transgression of his lips, briefly, but unreservedly. 

General 7?emar£s. There is something which is almost 
contradictory in the very mention of an Universal Rule ; 
since by a Rule we mean nothing less than an intelligible 

133 



134 RULES OF RATIONAL CONVERSATION, 

principle or clue which may lead us through a labyrinth of un- 
known because ever multiplying circumstances. The verbal 
demonstration of any intelligible principle to be univers- 
ally applicable to circumstances which are in any sense un- 
known, is indeed a hopeless task. The epithet Universal is 
therefore here of importance, not as one which is safe from 
the chance of misconception, but merely as one which is 
necessary to denote the difference which appears by a. com- 
parison of the first rule with the tw T o others. If either of the 
three is of any value, it is because there is a spirit in it which 
underlies and gives life to its letter. The spirit of the first 
rule may be called universal, because it consists essentially in 
the simple reverence for truth, as truth. That rule implies 
that there is no fact or circumstance which is so trivial in it- 
self or in its actual relations, that it is not worthy of the most 
protracted attention which we are capable of bestowing upon 
it ; and that our inability to trace its influence to an indefinite 
extent in every direction, is solely owing to our want of such 
a microscopic acuteness and such a telescopic range of intel- 
lectual vision, as the just appreciation of nature requires. 
Facts which might otherwise be regarded as isolated and un- 
important, are thus by a sort of natural faith presumed, apart 
from the evidence of perception, to be essential constituents 
in one great scheme of universal truth, even before this 
scheme may be distinctly realized as a beneficent instrumen- 
tality, by which the God of nature and of grace is ever work- 
ing out his own glory and the happiness of his obedient chil- 
dren. This rule may therefore be said to be based on an 
acknowledgment of that " first and great commandment" of 
love to God, as the others may upon that of " the second," or 
love to our fellow-man. When the one shall indeed become 
in every sense universal, the others will doubtless become 
superfluous, and therefore obsolete ; as is certified by the 
strong public sentiment which already stamps personalities as 
being irrelevant in all kinds of useful discussion. Since, 
therefore, with the increased prevalence of the rule which has 



RULES OF RATIONAL CONVERSATION. 1 35 

been styled Universal, those which have been styled Condi- 
tional must become still more exceptional, these designations 
may perhaps be seen so to illustrate one another, as to show- 
that the distinction must be recognized as an experimental 
fact. 

Particular Remarks. (A.) Of course there are difficul- 
ties in adopting this rule, not only from the diversity of views 
and suggestions which may arise in the minds of different 
persons in the same company on the same occasion, but also 
on account of the hesitancy which any individual may feel in 
selecting as most worthy of remark, from among the throng 
of suggestions which may arise in his own mind, that which 
is most naturally or closely and evidently connected with the 
particular matter which may be at the moment under con- 
sideration. Both of these circumstances obviously tend to 
prevent the co-operation of thought and feeling in the de- 
velopment of intellectual or spiritual fruit, and to make our 
spoken converse an unnatural and unavailable medley of dis- 
united and undigested details. These difficulties, however, 
it should be observed, may be said to be the very occasion 
for our requiring any rules at all on the subject, as being the 
main obstacles which occur in this field of operation, to the 
maintenance of that divine and diffusive harmony which is 
both the surest means and the worthiest end of all social aspi- 
rations. The rule therefore will be plainly entitled to our re- 
spect, so long as it may appear to be the best means by which 
these obstacles are kept in view-, for the sake of enabling us, so 
far as may be possible, to avoid them. The following of the 
letter may not ensure the fulfillment of the rule, but the faith- 
ful following of the spirit does ensure that fulfilling of the 
spirit, which most contributes to present success and best 
qualifies for future progress. To obtain the benefit of the 
rule, therefore, we have only to follow the spirit as expressed 
bv the letter, so far as it may suggest to our minds any intel- 
ligible and feasible applications. 
12* 



136 RULES OF RATIONAL CONVERSATION. 

One obvious suggestion which thus becomes binding in this 
rule is, the right of every member of a social gathering to 
throw into the common stock of entertainment, such views or 
illustrations of the matter under their joint consideration as 
his own sense of duty may demand from him. This privi- 
lege results from the simple fact of an abstract equality which 
is to be presumed in the rights of all who may recognize one 
another as companions ; and, if cherished as a piece of duty, 
will of course not be exercised in violation of social order : 
that is, not until others of the company, such as there gen- 
erally are, who may be presumed to be more fully qualified 
for judging or explaining the matter, shall have had the op- 
portunity of anticipating his remarks. — Another such sugges- 
tion, which seems immediately to flow from this, is the right 
and duty of any one to recur to a previous subject of conver- 
sation upon w T hich he may have been prevented from speaking 
through deference to this principle of social order, but without 
in the mean time finding himself relieved from the obligation 
of utterance, either through an anticipation by others of his 
intended meaning, or by their incidentally convincing him of 
the inaccuracy or irrelevancy of his view. It may be observed 
indeed that the progress of any conversation necessarily im- 
plies an apparent change of the immediate subject, whether 
this changeful appearance may consist in the desultory re- 
hearsal of facts and fancies without regard to their inherent 
or presumed connection, or in the more thoughtful movement 
among the minor details which may relate to an engrossing 
central theme : and the return from a hasty diversion or re- 
mote illustration will therefore of course necessitate a real 
or seeming change of subject which will be more or less 
abrupt in proportion as the previous departure has been ab- 
rupt and protracted. But, under the circumstances supposed, 
the speaker will evidently not be responsible for this irregu- 
larity, if he shall have been only careful to avail himself of 
the first fair opportunity for delivering his sentiment. 

Another suggestion, which is furnished rather by the spirit 



RULES OF RATIONAL CONVERSATION. 137 

than by the letter of this rule, is, that where one topic of 
conversation appears to be exhausted (which indeed must 
ever be only an appearing), from the general absence of dis- 
position or material for comment on the part of all who may 
be together on the occasion, a new subject of remark may be 
introduced by any individual under a deliberate conviction of 
its inherent propriety, and with due reference to the principle 
of priority already mentioned as a part of social order. In 
providing for the preservation of harmonious conversation, it 
is of course necessary that the supply of appropriate subject 
matter shall not be interrupted, and the obtrusion of that 
which is inappropriate therefore indirectly invited, by any of 
our rules : and such results might evidently ensue from a tena- 
cious regard for the mere letter of that now remarked upon. 

(B.) The two principal and most obvious reasons for this 
rule, perhaps are, First; That it is always impossible for one 
person to know from any appreciable appearances, the motives 
of another in any action, since they depend mainly upon the 
condition of his heart, which is apparent, only to the Supreme 
Judge of the world, and not upon his visible or other physical 
circumstances, which only are known, and that but imperfectly 
to his fellow-men : and Second ; That such knowledge, were 
it possible, would be always irrelevant, inasmuch as our deal- 
ings with other men must be regulated by the extrinsic cha- 
racter or current value of their performances. It is worthy 
of remark, however, that one's natural endowments and de- 
ficiencies, and even those intellectual attainments and pecu- 
liarities which are the results of the culture and the custom 
which may each alike be styled a " second nature," are justly 
distinguishable from those governing dispositions and impulses 
which spring immediately from the recesses of the heart, and 
which alone are truly characteristic of the person as a re- 
sponsible being. The one class of facts may therefore be 
regarded as legitimate materials for conversation and inquiry, 
while the other must remain a sort of forbidden fruit which 



138 RULES OF RATIONAL CONVERSATION. 

we cannot reach if we would, and could not use if we could 
pluck it. 

(C.) If the preceding rules may be regarded as intelligible 
and useful, this, in conclusion, may be found almost to explain 
itself. If, as has just been intimated, a mistaken opinion or 
an habitual prejudice does not necessarily imply a vice of the 
will, being rather the passive material or instrument, than the 
very power, of the determining motive, the formal breach of 
social order here contemplated may obviously admit of justi- 
fication on this ground. And what can be more truly sug- 
gestive and profitable to all parties, than the frank and timely, 
and yet unobtrusive and unintentional revelation of one's own 
infirmities and extravagances which is thus induced? If, on 
the other hand, the formal transgression shall prove to have 
actually resulted from a present fault of unwatchfulness in 
the speaker, the formal error becomes obviously more or less 
of a willful one, and, as such, is a proper subject for repent- 
ance and condemnation on the part of the transgressor. A 
just appreciation of the two other rules which have now been 
considered, will therefore require him to give utterance to such 
condemnation ; while a becoming sense of humiliation, sec- 
onded by the same formal injunctions, may well prevent him 
from presuming to entertain or edify his hearers, with a pre- 
cise estimate of the error of his motive or the condition of his 
heart. 

Application, The preceding remarks and rules are offered 
for the consideration of those only who regard society as one 
of their fields of individual service. They are based upon the 
assumption that the earnest man seeks for no recreation or 
repose except that which is incident to the divinely ordained 
diversification of duty. As in every more limited field of 
action it is observable that an attempted compromise between 
rival principles results chiefly in confusion, so, in the great 
arena of social life, be it called a field of labor or one of 



RULES OF RATIONAL CONVERSATION. 139 

strife, we find the strongest confirmation of the principle. 
There can be no rivalry admitted here between our convic- 
tions of duty and our anticipations of pleasure as the laws of 
action, but one of the two must be wholly subordinated and 
rendered tributary to the other, if any purpose whatever is 
steadily pursued. To those who acquiesce in the constant 
supremacy of the law of duty, however imperfectly or indi- 
rectly it may be revealed, the business of all life becomes but a 
varied work and a varied worship ; and among such the work 
of society is a true co-ordination and consummation of that of 
individuals, so that the a fruits of the Spirit 5 ' declare them- 
selves with all the emphasis of an united experience, in 
64 gl° rv to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good-will 
to men." 

It must be particularly observed that the proposed rules of 
conversation prescribe no mode of settling the question of 
personal precedence, which they necessarily assume as a ques- 
tion ever pending, and the decision of which depends upon 
the relative weight of personal character. Silence upon such 
a subject may, however, be more expressive than speech, since 
it cannot be held up as a subject of sufficient importance either 
for thought or for speech, except in so far as the title to such 
authority is indisputably displayed in the outward demonstra- 
tion, through the obedience of faith and the growth of refine- 
ment, of the abstract power and progressive order of universal 
truth. This effective obedience, so far as it shall prevail, will 
beget an unvarying harmony and a practical equality, in which 
it may be fitly said, that all will rule and all will serve. Even 
an established preponderance, which may not amount to an 
entire prevalence, of this perfect loyalty in any branch of 
societv, will constitute the condition of corporate freedom in 
which the laws are the most obvious and the most honored 
rulers, under the immediate influences of Heavenly Love ; 
for this established recognition of abstract principles of right 
which are universally appreciable, will become then a court 
of appeal by which all the breaches of social harmony may 



140 RULES OF RATIONAL CONVERSATION. 

be both promptly and finally decided upon. As the recog- 
nized principles are in very deed the offspring of truth, they 
will bear witness to their parentage, by being few, simple, 
mutually illustrative, and mutually confirmative. Thus will 
they be open to the apprehension and application of all, being 
ever ready to aid the lover of truth in advancing the glory of 
the God of truth, by stifling the germs of slothful confusion, 
by exposing the pretensions of spurious dignity 9 and by silenc- 
ing the clamor of hasty conceit. 



LAW. 



"By what constraint shall we invoke thee, 
Thou who withholdest fools from error ? 
What happy summons first awoke thee, 
And bade thee spread thy wholesome terror ? 

" Oh, rouse thee from thy lair of mystery, 
And make the world a home of gladness ! 
Let not the page of human history 
Be evermore a roll of sadness !" * 

— Know, mortals ! I am but a phantom. 

Look not to me for beds of roses ! 
My rule were a chaotic random, 

Had not each utterance its Moses. 

My origin is aye among you : 

Not mainly from the might of princes, 
Nor from the strains your seers have sung you, 

Your law salutes you, and convinces. 

'Tis not the ballot of the voter : 

'Tis not the dogma of the student : 
Than all by far an abler motor 

Is the example of the prudent. 

One Ruler governs all your nations : 

His secret is with those that fear Him, 
Who welcome all his dispensations, 

And live in firm allegiance near Him. 

Like them rule ye each erring neighbor, 

Unwillingly, if not in blindness ! 
Spread with your hands the law of labor ! 

Drop from your lips the law of kindness ! 

* " And lo ! a roll of a book . . . And there was written therein lamentations, and mourn- 
ing and woe." — Ezek. ii. 9, 10. 

141 



UNANIMOUS SUFFRAGE. 



" Let me fall now into the hand of the Lord . . . but let me not fall into 
the hand of man." — i Chron. xxi. 13, 

" Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth." — Isa. xlv. 9. 

" If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall 
ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven." — Matt. 
xviii. 19. 

FOR thousands of years the Sword has been the idol of 
nations, the " forlorn hope" of righteous rulers, and the 
ultima ratio, the u last argument" of bewildered lawgivers. 
Within a few centuries a mighty competitor for its influence 
has been revealed to the world, in the outspoken claim of 
Majorities. The two modes of appeal are practically alike 
in so far. as numbers may determine their decision, and also 
in so far as this more accidental indication may be overborne 
by the superior prowess, physically or intellectually, of supe- 
rior men.' But the voice of majorities is doubtless upon the 
whole the preferable rule, inasmuch as it is evidently based 
more upon permanent principles, and less upon passing phe- 
nomena. As regards eternal destiny all men are certainly 
born potentially "free" and actually "equal," the Universal 
Father being " no respecter of persons ;" and with nations, as 
with individuals, the most stable policy must clearly be that 
which subordinates the physical life to the spiritual. The 
recognized claim of majorities, being based upon the pre- 
sumption of equality, is evidently an advance in the right 
direction, or toward the standard of spiritual perfection. 
In this imperfect world, however, there is always some 
142 



UNANIMOUS SUFFRAGE. 1 43 

danger of our carrying our ideal presumptions of perfection 
into practical extravagance. So long as either the sword or 
the ballot-box shall be to any extent necessary as an instru- 
ment of decision, it is evident that there must be some who 
are more fit to be governed than to govern, and who are 
therefore examples of a practical inequality. Apart from the 
consideration that by insisting upon the participation of such 
in the ceremonials of sovereignty we should weakly exagger- 
ate the abstraction of equality and disparage that of freedom, it 
is note-worthy that we should thus inferentially ignore the doc- 
trine, that man's first business in time is rather to serve than 
to rule. We should even practically impede the work of 
those who are indeed the public servants, since either the in- 
competent fighter or the incompetent voter must still farther 
impair his individual and social efficiency by his misplaced 
action. 

The subordination of might to right is still to be the lesson 
of history, A healthy development of public opinion will 
yet, it may be hoped, supplant and substitute both sword and 
ballot as the swift terror to evil doers, and the sufficient praise 
to them that do well,* " Be of one mind," is the command 
which may be called the corner-stone of Christian govern- 
ment. To be of at least two minds, may be said to be an 
essential requirement of our now prevailing political systems. 
The once mysterious relations of Jew and Gentile may be re* 
garded as typical of the isolating and conflicting interests of 
the fallen nature in every age. The holy " Captain of Salva- 
tion " lived, and died, and rose again, u that he might recon- 
cile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the 
enmity thereby," The true soldier of the cross will always 
vote in practical influence ; and he will never vote in vain, 
because, instead of feeding the external evil by a direct oppo- 
sition, he will starve it, to the extent of his ability, by crucify- 
ing the internal evil. The measurement of might, either by 
arms or by numbers, cannot be the rule of right to one who 

* Rom. xiii. 3 ; i Pet. ii. 14. 
13 K 



144 UNANIMOUS SUFFRAGE. 

holds that the government of heaven, though not indeed of 
the world, is ever in the world, as well as above the world. 
Neither contests nor confederations based upon mere worldly 
policy, can result in anything better than Babel-confusion, 
that being ever but a merely formal, if not a counterfeit zeal 
or unanimity, which is not immediately and individually de- 
rived from faith in the Divine Power, or from a resulting in- 
sight into the Divine Will. 



POLITICS. 



Some people live in a world of their own ; 

Some live in their surroundings ; 
And some, I ween, hold a worthier throne 

With no provincial boundings. 

To all their life is a spending of force, 

For objects whole os: hollow ; 
In all, the outlay expresses some source 

From which such fruits may follow. 

The throne that rules the unbroken extent 
Of human works and pleasures, 

From large resources its prowess will vent 
In many ways and measures. 

The scattered thrones of sectarian name 

And wasting emulation, 
With sudden impact and perishing fame 

Betray their slight foundation. 

"We stand united, divided we fall," 
The old, familiar presage, 
Still hints its terrible warning to all, 
And spirit-stirring message. 

But let us join on a tenable ground, 

Not in an empty seeming, 
Standing from every constriction unbound 

Which tells of selfish scheming. 

Then private duty may furnish the force, 

In harmony divided, 
By whose advance in its gathering course 

Both Church and State are guided. 



14* 



THE LAST HERESY. 



" Certainly there be those that delight in giddiness, and account it a bond- 
age to fix a belief."— Bacon. 

NEITHER orthodoxy nor heresy is anything, if it be not 
practical. Truth is the law as well as the lawful object 
of life, and doctrine is valuable only as the reflection of truth. 
Short of that universality of truth which is the ultimate test 
of practical orthodoxy, and in which all mysteries, distinctions 
and peculiarities are either eradicated or harmonized, all doc- 
trine must have its subjective shortcoming, which can only 
await the development of events to become, and to be mani- 
fested as, practical heresy. While the subjective wisdom of 
one generation after another becomes incorporated in objective 
knowledge, the essential condition and congenital tendencies 
of human nature remain unchanged. The mysterious pro- 
gress of partial doctrine toward universal truth is undoubtedly 
a collective as well as an individual work ; but the responsi- 
bilities of individuals increase therein with their increasing 
advantages. " The light," said that genuine seer and faithful 
standard-bearer of gospel-truth, Isaac Pennington, " shineth 
more and more toward the perfect day ; and it is not the 
owning of the light as it shone in the foregoing ages which 
will now commend any man to God, but the owning and 
subjecting to the light of the present age." The pertinacious 
profession of the light as it shone in the last age, may be the 
subtlest form of practical heresy. 

It must be painfully evident to all who are indeed concerned 
to " stand in the ways and ask for the old paths" in order 
146 



THE LAST HERESY. 147 

that they may u see" their essential features, and truly " walk 
therein," * that the great adversary of souls has in our day re- 
sorted to what may be regarded as his last and most danger- 
ous stratagem. By inducing a theoretical denial or actual 
forgetfulness of his own existence, he is making men blind, 
in their hour of outward security, to the essential nature of 
evil, removing as it were the oldest and most serviceable w r ay- 
marks, and plausibly insinuating that human life is a diver- 
sified culture rather than a battle of doubtful issue, or that, 
in the language of a current proverb, " all roads lead to the 
Great City." If each of his victims will only contribute some- 
thing to the recognition of this culminating heresy, he doubt- 
less cares little how inconsistently orthodox they may be in 
other respects. 

The religion of Christ is the religion of the charity which 
" thinketh no evil" of its neighbor. Christian charity, by re- 
membering the infirmity of nature, can ever impute the short- 
coming and transgression of a neighbor to ignorance and 
unwatchfulness on his part. While condemning the error or 
the deed, it will pity the subject or the agent. Sensitive to 
sin, it will impute the commission to the father of sin, rather 
than to the agent in whom its manifestation may have been, 
for anything which generally appears at any particular time, 
a mere omission. The greater the cunning or the malice 
which may be manifested in any individual or collective of- 
fence, the more readily it will trace the baleful appearance 
to a contrivance and cruelty which are at once infernal and 
superhuman. Living and walking " in the spirit," it can ever 
find a way to "resist the Devil," f without murmuring at the 
formal evil, which Christians are indeed commanded % not to 
resist, and with w r hich they cannot stoop to contend, without 
breaking the harmony of their lives. Like their divine Mas- 
ter, they feel that they are sent to call sinners to repentance, 
and like Him they are therefore content that the tares shall 
be mingled with the wheat, until the great harvest-day, when, 
* Jp:r. vi. 16. | Jam. iv. 7. \ Matt. v. 39. 



148 THE LAST MEREST. 

through the divine blessing on their labors, the wiles of the 
"enemy" who " hath done this" shall be fully and finally 
exposed. 

The only excuse which any body of men can have for 
establishing themselves, or for professing themselves to be 
established, as the custodians of a particular form of religious 
belief, lies in the presumption that that form is superior to all 
others, and in a consequent willingness and gladness, if they 
be not like the Israelites a professedly exclusive sect, to have 
their standard of truth brought, at once most closely and most 
publicly, into comparison with all other standards. This is 
the very work by which all may most effectually " resist the 
Devil," a work which is capable of enlisting all the powers 
of their being, and which the Devil, so surely as there is such 
an entity, strives most anxiously, as a hater of light, to repress. 
We have a memorable illustration of the neglect of this work 
in the early annals of one of our chief American cities. We 
may trust that the descendants of the Puritans are preparing 
to abandon the theological libertinism which was the natural 
result of their former ecclesiastical fastidiousness ; and the 
descendants of the Quakers may well profit by the warning 
of their example, whenever tempted to disparage the views 
and to repulse the friendly overtures of others, either by sitting 
in judgment on their motives, or by alike disregarding their 
motives and their arguments. The Day of days will, we 
may hope, not then overtake us " as a thief in the night." 



ONE. 



" Where shall I join, and where divide ?" — 
Such query greets the mental ear, 
Full oft, of him who would decide 

His doubtful steps by truth severe : — 

M Such kind relations God hath made, 
In things with life and things without* 
To bless the soul whose course is laid 
Always by Wisdom's secret route ; 

44 Such harsh exceptions doth ordain, 
To cheat, in circumstances same, 
The eager grasp which else would gain 
That wisdom-fruit in folly's name ; 

44 With such diversity perplexed, 

In all my plans and all my dreams, 
How shall I win the prize annexed 
To truthful life and truthful schemes ?" 

Find, anxious soul ! thyself within, 

The true diversity and strife : 
Fight ever there the king of sin 

With armor of the King of Life. 

There seek the pulse of harmony 

Which nurses health, and strength, and joy ; 
There shun the jarring mockery 

Which animates but to annoy. 

So mayst thou ever learn to sing 
The universal bridal song, 
M There's unity in everything, 

Except between the right and wrong." 

149 



THE REALIZATION OF REST. 



"They entered not in, because of unbelief." — Heb. iv. 6. 

THE right or privilege of rest, even in this world, implies 
both the dutv and the power of rest. As in every 
other item of man's probational experience, a trinity of prin- 
ciples is here traceable. The austere extreme of duty is con- 
nected with the genial and otherwise relaxing one of pleasure 
by the efficient mean of power. The thing is simpler than 
the expression : but the expression, if at all intelligible, is 
worthy of attention on account of its extended applicability. 
The very same fusion of dutv, right, and power is equallv 
observable even in the seemingly antipodal subject of labor. 
Only when labor and rest shall become indistinguishable by 
the completion of the probational life, can this trinity, with 
every other, be lost in the fulfillment of an ideal unity. 

Realization, being simply the conversion of the possible 
into the actual, is only limited, in things possible, by the 
limitation of human faith in the wisdom of God. However 
the partial prevalence of evil may bound or qualify our con- 
ception of the omnipotence of God, all experience testifies 
both that he is omniscient, and that his power is not only 
supreme over all his own undoubted works, but that it is, 
historically at least, a progressive power. Where the reali- 
zation, even by faith, of the presence and guidance of such a 
Being is possible, premeditation on the part of fallible man is 
obvious insolence. Whatever be the task of any who can be 
said to have any remaining capacity for service, w4 that which 

150 



THE REALIZATION OF REST. 151 

may be known of God is manifest in them." and becomes at 
once their law of labor and their hope of rest. This is the 
true Gospel (Rom. i. 16, 17) wherein, as it is accepted and 
adhered to, 8k the righteousness of God," Christ within, "the 
hope of glory" (1 Cor. i. 30; Col. i. 27) is "revealed from 
faith to faith." The perfect realization of rest by all men, is 
thus simply conditioned upon their so making their wills a 
part of the divine will* as that their work shall become a part 
of the divine work, and their whole life a part of the divine 
harmony. The extravagances of false metaphysics, to which 
all prevailing discords and hardships are, openly or secretly* 
directly traceable (Prov. xxi\ 2), are themselves secondary 
and not primary evils, being consequential, not causative, to 
the pride of self-will, and the want of heart-belief. 



MUSIC. 



From order, the first law of nature,* 

And measure, the mother of art, 
Springs the statute of life-legislature, 

That music in life shall have part. 

Thus, music's a current compelling 

As gently possessed in its source ; 
Or, as oceanward leaping and swelling, 

It channels our life in its course. 

True music corrects all distortions, 

Disgusting, deluding, or droll, 
By supplying, in proper proportions, 

The mixture of senses and soul. 

As life settles down in sensation, 

Things present and tangible rule, 
And the glories of inner creation 

Recede from the thought of the fool. 

Let music, with clamor diluted, 

Be poured in his wondering ear, 
And the cure to the case may be suited, 

And Orphic enchantments appear. 

As rises the soul in dominion 

O'er art, and o'er nature as curst, 
It will hardly depress its free pinion 

So basely to quench its pure thirst. 

For music remains, in its essence, 

The concert of matter and mind, 
Which foretokens the rich coalescence 

In heaven reserved for mankind. 

* "The one underlying postulate of all science is the harmony of Truth with itself." 
North A 7nerican Review, xcix. 404. 
152 



THE NEW YEAR. 



" The times of this ignorance God winked at ; but now commandeth all 
men everywhere to repent." — Acts xvii. 30. 

AS change and time are inseparable elements of individual 
experience, so revolution and progress are allied facts, 
by which the guidance of Divine Providence is manifested in 
the collective history of mankind. As the phenomena of 
physical life are found to be maintained only at the expense 
of a continual death of the constituent parts of living organ- 
isms, and as the lapse of time itself is known only by the 
changes which we are in the habit of imputing to its agency, 
so do we find all social progress to depend upon gradual but 
continual destruction and reconstruction of outward institu- 
tions. What time and progress and vitality essentially are, 
we need not expect availingly to know, until our eyes may be 
opened to behold the realities of eternity, as our feet become 
planted upon the immutable foundation, which, through the 
mercy of God in Christ Jesus, has been laid in Zion, as a 
refuge from the fatal ravages of sin. When the last times 
shall indeed have passed over us, and the company of the 
redeemed shall realize that " as in Adam all died, so in Christ 
all are made alive, " the earth will doubtless be released from 
the participation in its master's curse, which has been expressly 
recorded for our instruction. Without vainly undertaking to 
speculate upon the crowning changes, physical and spiritual, 
which will usher in that Divine order of things, we may safely 
assume that revolution and progress, if they shall then survive, 
will be nothing more or less than the working and expression 

153 



154 THE NEW TEAR. 

of an u n wasting and ever expanding state of perfection. The 
curtain of futurity will then, indeed, be withdrawn, and a new 
era of everlasting happiness dawn upon all who shall have 
walked by the true faith, and held fast the true hope, and 
pursued the true love through the darkness, and dangers, and 
conflicts of time. 

This great revolution is certainly the one event which de- 
mands our constant attention over and through all particular 
changes, being that to which they are all tributary as parts of 
a whole. Such particular changes, therefore, as are obviously 
typical of that general one, become especially interesting to 
us as natural mementoes of that of which we have but too 
much need to be reminded. The rotation of the seasons is an 
impressive emblem of the ever moving, and yet ever restricted 
and ever recurring variety of human experience, as developed 
in the history, either of individual or of social life. The era, 
therefore, arbitrary as it must be, at which we agree for the 
sake of uniformity to compute that a new year has commenced 
its course, is one full of profitable suggestion to the reflective 
mind. As accountable and fallible beings, we then seem to 
be especially called upon to review and correct our accounts, 
in anticipation of that final settlement, at which " the Judge 
of all the earth" will preside, and to which all nations and 
generations of men will be witnesses. 

The contemplation of that awfully grand and surely im- 
pending event, is well fitted to impress us all deeply with the 
conviction that our destination, like our origin, is, so far, one. 
In the blindness of self-conceit, and in the distracting idolatry 
of diverse lusts, w 7 e are indeed prone to forget the filial and 
fraternal ties of duty, and to seek to carve out a career of 
individual independence, even " as gods, knowing good and 
evil" for ourselves, and using the gifts of creation as in our 
own right, and for the purpose of private pleasure, profit, or 
glory. Hence alienations, divisions, discords, and at last open 
fightings, inevitably ensue. The charity, or love, which " be- 
gins at home," and which is born of faith, and nourished by 



THE NEW TEAR. 1 55 

hope, is the only effectual antidote to this insinuating and 
deceptive poison of selfishness. As that Divine grace finds 
place in our hearts, we will neither seek nor wish for any 
separation from our fellow-beings, short of that in which all 
our differences and all our agreements will be for ever ab- 
sorbed, when the " Son of man" shall separate the souls of all 
nations, " one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep 
from the goats." 

The condition of a community being merely the reflected 
aggregate and average of the individuals composing it, public 
events may often be prudently regarded as the evidence of 
tendencies in private practice which may have been previously 
unsuspected. In the confusion which now so conspicuously 
prevails in the church and in the world, can we not discover 
a warning to enter into the closet of our own hearts, and 
examine into the state of the account, by which we may 
"know our own selves" by the aid of Him who "is in us, 
except we be reprobates?" Head-work may guide our hands 
into a plausible conformity with the labors and views of our 
fellow-men ; but heart-work alone can guide both our heads 
and our hands in harmonious obedience to the pure and pro- 
gressive dictates of Truth. May the New Year indeed be- 
come the herald of the ever new and Divine order in which 
a just subordination and a true co-operation shall increasingly 
triumph over the hostile influence of confusion and competi- 
tion, however speciously these may be often disguised as pro- 
moters of peace and prosperity ! 

i st Mo. 1863. 
14 



TIME AND ETERNITY. 



Time's level stretch as measured by the years, 
History scans, and her memento rears. 
Eternity rolls on in state sublime, 
Although by men misnamed the flight of time. 
Not flight, but tarriance, is of time the woe ; 
Not real progress, but deceitful show, 
If men rise not eternity to know. 
Varied in vastness with his mental reach, 
Eternity shines through the life of each, 
Revealing all which times appears to teach* 
Soul is the seat of wisdom. To its Source 
Aspire in prayer with all thy private force, 
Requesting thence to be instructed how 
Years endless roll in the eternal now ! 



156 



AFTER-THOUGHT. 



" Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid." — I Cor. iii. n. 

" True philosophy will often have occasion to show that supposed problems 
are no problems at all, but mere impositions of the mind upon itself, arising 
out of its unrectified position — errors grounded upon errors. A much better 
test of a sound philosophy than the number of pre-existing problems which 
it solves, will be the quality of those which it proposes. By raising the 
station of the spectator it will bring a region of new inquiry within his 
view; and the very faculty of comprehending these questions will often 
depend upon the station from which they are viewed."— De Quincey, 

DESIRING to attain to all possible explicitness of state- 
ment, without pretending to disguise the fragmentary 
and too disjointed nature of his views of Truth, the author 
cannot conclude his labor of literary patch-work without en- 
deavoring to add to its coherency, by anticipating probable 
and perhaps plausible objections. He deems it prudent to 
disclaim all definitive recognition both of the fundamental 
duality of Manes and of the fundamental unity of Hegel. 
He deems it alike unnecessary to begin with the one by 
cutting the Gordian Knot of the problem of Evil ; and with 
the other, by assuming an ambiguous paradox (the identity 
of Being and Nothing), to which all minor diversities of 
view shall be systematically subordinated. He would rather 
content himself with simply forewarning the inexperienced 
inquirer, of the danger, ever imminent in proportion as his 
sphere of knowledge or experience shall be a limited one, of 
mistaking mere opposition, or antithesis of view, for actual 

H 157 



I 5 8 AFTER- THO UGHT. 

contradiction, or incongruity of fact. With that expansion of 
consciousness, which ever attends the life of true feeling, earnest 
thinking and faithful working, the very centre of conscious- 
ness, or the intellectual stand-point, is gradually corrected, 
so that views which at first seemed wholly antipodal may at 
last be found to be really, closely as well as harmoniously 
related. Through all degrees of fragmentary attainment, it 
is thus evident, subjective truth or the truth of individual 
perception, can be no sure test of objective truth or the 
truth of catholic reality ; so that the most fundamental ques- 
tions are most wisely left undecided, their premature de- 
cision, overt or covert, inevitably entailing misapprehension 
and discord. Until the realization of that life of perfect 
unity in which the natural antithesis of matter and spirit 
shall be found to have been a merely subjective phenomenon, 
this universal though individual antithesis must, with its ac- 
companying power of synthesis, present to each individual 
his own several triune law of work. Like the unswerving 
living and seeing wheels of the prophet's vision,* these laws 
in their practical application and progressive revolution, will 
be incapable of clashing together, or of at all differing 
except by including or being included in one another ; thus 
demonstrating that in the principle of Trinity lies the largest 
law of probationary Humanity — Man's sole refuge from the 
present distractions of a fallen Duality, and his sole hope of 
the ultimate realization of a divine Unity, 

* Ezek., ch. i., &c. 



TRINITY. 



The mystery of one and three 

Is that which meets us ever, 
A lock and key which aye agree, 

And yield to wise endeavor. 

From twain extremes on centric mean 

In common cause revolving. 
O'er life's dark dreams a light is seen 

The shades of doubt dissolving. 

On living wheels with eyes begirt 

Creation still is moving: 
Through death's dread seals life leaps alert, 

A Maker's might still proving. 

So heaven and hell, o'er-spreading all 

The field of man's probation, 
The doctrine tell of Adam's fall, 

And of the great salvation. 

Their germs pervade all charms that lure 

Our passions or our senses; 
And, as obeyed, our bliss ensure, 

Or punish our offences. 

May all we see, and all we do, 

Illustrate and inherit 
The knowledge free and profit true, 

Which turn on God's good Spirit ! 

By faith death's sting alive to shun, 
We then the grace shall gather 

In every thing* to know the Son, 
And, through the Son, the Father. 
* " In him all things consist." Col. i. 17. 



H 




